A History of Photography in USC Libraries Collections

Say Cheese: Vernacular Photography and Identity

Photography as an everyday social practice should hardly be unfamiliar to anyone in possession of a smartphone. Today, one can send a snapshot or selfie across the world in mere seconds; an individual can send hundreds or thousands of instantaneous photos in a single day. But the practice of vernacular photography is far from new, having started long before the advent of the photographic cell phone. Since the very beginnings of photography, it has been used as a social tool, from bourgeois daguerreotype portraiture intended to cement one’s own social standing to the carte de visite, an early instance of photographs being spread far and wide. Such photographs possessed great power, too - as do the social photographs of today, even if it may be easy to overlook. In his 1861 lecture, Pictures and Progress, Frederick Douglass referred to the employment of the then-relatively new technology as “making our subjective nature objective.” Indeed, when we take a photograph we are giving some deeply individual part of ourselves a tactile form, preserving our subjective reality forever. Through the years it has become ever more easy to do so, as small, portable cameras with short exposure times—eventually, mere hundredths of a second—replaced the bulky instruments necessary for those prior images. Every silly picture or piece of a family photo album, holds immense worth as the subject has been granted immortality through the camera. Such is the power we wield even in sending a dog-filtered Snap to a friend. And anyone can own that power!

Social photography is an extremely democratic process; the nobility, bourgeoisie, and lower classes are all equally able to take hold of their identity before the same lens. Marginalized groups still fighting for equality in the eyes of society are viewed exactly as anyone else through a mechanical eye—that of the camera. Douglass, as well as many others throughout the annals of history, recognized the capacity for social change inspired by the photograph. Today, this is more apparent than ever, as we enter a new era of global awareness and developing individual identities as citizens of the world. With that comes real responsibility to craft the best society we can. Some of the images to follow were deliberate parts of social movements. Others have been roped into change simply by documenting the subjective nature of those pictured. Many of them are imperfect, or not intentionally artistic—after all, they are vernacular photographs, taken by ordinary people documenting their lives. Regardless, each one is reflective of that faculty only the photograph may express: one’s own personal experience, instantaneously made immortal.

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