Vintage Snapshots
the wondrous world of vernacular photography
Category: Americana
July 12, 2021
Hollywood and Vine
Just a kid crossing Hollywood Blvd with his mother. Something about the placement of the tape that was used to hold the photo in the album strikes me as kind of poetic…but maybe that’s just me.
I wonder who may have been recording in the Capitol building’s basement recording studios that day…
June 7, 2021
West of Prescott, Arizona
The world just used to be a better color, I guess.
September 15, 2020
On Stage
October 15, 2017
The Windup
Pitcher, circa 1950s (click to enlarge)
May 3, 2017
Just Great
Pretty Good: Restaurant + Mustang, 1966 (click to enlarge)
April 22, 2016
A Man Could Stand in Lincoln’s Eye
At work, circa 1940s (click to enlarge)
October 20, 2014
Baseball Glove
America, 1960s (click to enlarge)
There isn’t much to really say here, except that this is why snapshots are great.
August 5, 2014
A Depression-Era Portrait
Minnesota, 1939 (click to enlarge)
This photo didn’t jump out at me at first when I came across it in an album I recently picked up, but in looking at it again it struck me as possessing that simple beauty that snapshots are sometimes able to so singularly capture. There is a Minnesota processing stamp on the back dated April 1939, and so much about it conveys that Depression-era feel, from her dress to the house on blocks with no step up to the screen door. The dusty car in the background, her expression, the composition — it doesn’t, to be sure, scream “Great Depression” like some of the well-known images from that time, but it is, I think, deeply evocative in it own understated way.
July 27, 2014
“View from Our Front Window”
Across the street, c 1910s (click to enlarge)
Vintage Snapshots 