On the Rocks, Hampton Beach
Unknown Maker
1919
- Medium
- Gelatin silver prints
- Dimensions
- Top image: 5.6 × 9.9 cm (2 1/4 × 3 15/16 in.); Top paper: 6.3 × 9.9 cm (2 1/2 × 3 15/16 in.); Bottom image: 5.7 × 9.9 cm (2 1/4 × 3 15/16 in.); Bottom paper: 6.2 × 9.9 cm (2 1/2 × 3 15/16 in.); Mount: 14 × 10.2 cm (5 9/16 × 4 1/16 in.)
- Genre
- photograph
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
photographic techniquesphotographygelatin silver printphotographic processesblack-and-white photographyphotograph
About
After George Eastman introduced the handheld Kodak #1 camera in 1888, amateurs made millions of snapshots depicting friends and family, travels, and festive occasions such as weddings. Even while solidifying such thoroughly conventional behaviors, amateur photography developed a new pictorial language that privileged immediacy, spontaneity, and accident. Career photographers and art historians—but also antiques vendors and flea-market shoppers—have long recognized the value of the “snapshot aesthetic.” The rise of social media and smartphones in recent years has effectively ended the era of the snapshot as both a printed photograph and an image for a private audience.
