Time is a great filter of all art. Naive people have decried the state of popular music, holding up the great composers of the past in comparison. In the time of Bach, there was just as much trash being sung in the streets. However, like today's pop music, it was ephemeral. Popular, consumed in the moment, then forgotten. Only a tiny percent will ever make it to a "Golden Oldies" album. Popular music is written and produced for popular consumption.
From all cameras, snapshots predominate, but they are not trash. They have a purpose far different from photographs. When dad lines up the family in front of the amazing natural wonder of the world and they all do an artificial smile, it is a memorial that says they were there. A friend and I went to Las Vegas. He asked me if I wanted him to take a picture of me with my camera. I was baffled. Why? "To show that you were there." This is the essence of a snapshot. As a photographer, the photographs I post in a gallery on my web-site make it clearly evident that I was there.
That is the difference. Snapshots are personal. They validate mileposts in people's lives. Artificiality, image quality, composition, etc. are not a consideration. Cousin Willie gets out of prison and comes to visit—"Git the Kodak!" A phuzzygraph of Willie with a telephone pole emerging from his head goes into the family album. It commemorates the day, and will always be warmly remembered each time the album is browsed. In time, it will be lost and forgotten. This is not a tragedy, since no one living has any connection to the event. Snapshots are all about context—not about excellent images.
Even the best of photography can be timely. As a photojournalist, I had to come to terms with the fact that the picture I so carefully crafted two days ago, on the front page and drew great praise yesterday, will be wrapping fish today.
We were conditioned to regard our negatives as our treasure trove. Yet, wedding photographers began including the negatives along with the albums. They found that reprint orders were rare, and the time to fill them was great enough that they were losing money by maintaining files and dealing with the customer over a small order. Doing annual reports, public relations for big companies, magazine assignments and so on for many years, not once did I ever get a request for a reprint. I filed the originals, so I could use them for stock or for my portfolio.
None of this is rubbish. Nor is it great and timeless. It serves a purpose and can be highly significant at the time—perhaps over the lifetime of those involved. After that, there is no context in which it will survive, and that is fine. Only the true masterpieces survive forever.
