Snapshot aesthetic

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The term snapshot aesthetic refers to a trend that began to influence fine art photography in the USA from around 1963. The style featured careless compositions and banal everyday subjects, often presented as eccentrically juxtaposed sequences of photographs. Snapshots were taken by 'artists' and hence deemed acceptable within certain sections of the fine art gallery system. The style became especially fashionable among 'artists with cameras' from the late 1970s until the mid 1980s. Notable practitioners were Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans. Between around 1990 until 2002, the style strongly influenced the commercial fashion photography in youth fashion magazines such as The Face, notably the Nan Goldin-influenced 'heroin chic' look. The style has since run its course in the magazines, and generally been superseeded by a more romantic neo-baroque look.

The term arose from the fascination of artists with the 'classic' black & white vernacular snapshot, the characteristics of which were: 1) they were made with a camera on which the viewfinder could not easily 'see' the edges of the frame, and so the subject had to be centred; and 2) they were made by ordinary amateur people recording the ceremonies on their lives and the places that they lived.