Amon Carter exhibit watches the snapshot evolve over a century
By Megan • Mar 4th, 2008 • Category: News for Creatives (archives)Charles Dee Mitchell reports for the Dallas Morning News:“FORT WORTH – The smile entered the lexicon of American amateur photography sometime around 1880. Thanks to flexible film negatives on roll holders and the near-instantaneous exposures they allowed, regular folks were freed from the stiffness of long exposures and the propriety of studio portraiture. Users in the thousands, and soon the millions, turned their cameras on friends and family to capture moments of import and frivolity that had not been possible before. This is only one of the underlying themes of “The Art of the American Snapshot: 1888-1978″ at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. And it should be noted that the smile you sense in these 234 images is as often on the part of the photographers as it is their subjects, who can still be slightly put off or even unaware that their picture is being taken. The photographers themselves, however, are invariably having a great time recording parties and vacations, people dressing up and goofing off.
The exhibition, which has been drawn from the collection of Robert E. Jackson and organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is divided into periods covering roughly two decades each.”
Megan is a creative producer at Wise Elephant.
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