Gil Pasternak - Taking Snapshots, Living the Picture

Reading Journal - Session 4 - 15/11/2016 

Taking Snapshots, Living the Picture: The Kodak Company’s Making of Photographic Biography - Gil Pasternak

·         snapshots as pictorial biographies

·         integrate picture-taking into everyday life, and regard photographs as self-contained repositories of biographical details

·         through technological innovation, anyone could take pictures, thus photography was integrated into everyday life

·         photographs can impart knowledge about the lived experiences and characters of those imprisoned within the photographic image

·         scholarly literature often treats photographs with caution, as past occurrences’ representational constructions that may or may not provide sufficient knowledge about the actualities they stand for

·         sitters, viewers, users, and producers are considered as the subjective agencies shaping photographic images’ contents and meanings—separately or collaboratively

·         in the 19^th cent., photographs mainly reminders of the subject’s appearance, but not mirror of life or events

·         Kodakery: A Magazine for Amateur Photographers offers tips and practices for snapshots, circulated by offering a free one-year subscription to camera buyers

·         amateur photographers encourages to take engaging photographs, not just technically sufficient ones

·         photographs used to register the present as accurately as possible in a rapidly changing world

·         photographs as a way of seeing oneself as others see you, taken when unaware of the camera

·         ‘one of the chief missions of the camera in the home should be to serve as a graphic recorder of the home life, chronicling the many changes man and time are ever making’

·         memory loss and unfamiliarity with one’s self as the human condition in the early twentieth century

·         photographs as accurate time capsules that store the camerists’ lived experiences

·         undocumented lives run the risk of disappearing into oblivion and being omitted from life itself

·         Kodak wanted to move away from staged photographs by telling readers that “people take great interest in stories, specifically favouring and remembering narratives that tell them ‘about the things that men and women and boys and girls have done and are doing’”

·         contest for people to send in story-telling pictures as a way to encourage saving memories and not just a changing likeness of people

·         albums as metaphors for life

·         sequences of pictures to form a biographical narrative (subject shown in different stages of life)

·         make photographs synonymous with biography by establishing a public discourse that framed the camera as an autonomous, one-eyed witness, and portrayed the occasion of picture taking as a routine activity in the photographable spectrum of lived experience

·         words are needed to link pictures and biography together

This essay certainly explains very well how important photos are when talking about biography and life narratives. The expression “a picture is worth a thousand words” springs to mind. Unstaged photos have much more power to tell a story, but without some words to explain what the picture shows, the full story cannot be portrayed, however, and a mystery remains that is filled with the viewers own imagination. I wasn’t aware what a huge role the Kodak Company played in encouraging taking these narrative pictures, in a way certainly focusing on the commercial aspect – more snapshots of life to preserve life mean more photos that need to be developed, as well as a greater desire for people to buy these cameras to take part in this special act. But especially considering the huge need nowadays to take a picture of everything and everyone to commit every small instance to permanent memory and share it with everyone else, it is interesting to read about how this all started, or at least got more encouraged. I can certainly understand the worth of pictures since my mother and I recently embarked on such a photographic journey while preparing a gift for the 95^th birthday of my grandmother’s sister. However, without her to tell the story of these photos, they would certainly be less valuable. 

My grandmother

and

her sister