Snaps

May 1 - 8, 1 9 9 7

[Art Reviews]

Amateur art

The offhand splendor of Snaps

by Bill Rodriguez
A photographic installation by Sandol Astrausky,
Denny Moers and Kathrine Lovell, at Center-City Artisans,
at the Arcade, Providence, through May 10.

Snaps is valuable as more than pop sociology and voyeuristic peeks into private lives. If some of these snapshots had been intended as art offerings by their takers, they might very well be judged minor masterpieces. The essence of a lot of moments and a lot of lives are distilled here, into a kind of existential eau de vie.
There are pictures of workers lined up outside a hat factory and a foundry, or posed by car they're proud of. In one three brothers in WWI uniforms peer back at us through wire-rimmed spectacles as at their feet a tyke, and future soldier, salutes our way. There are a couple of studio poses, such as a small boy with his arm on a stuffed fawn, the boy's troubled eyes looking caught in headlights.

Found Poetry: A talk with Snaps's collectors

Some are arranged on old sections of crackled brown wainscoting or in chipped painted frames, underlining their age. None of the glimpses into the past appear to be later than the 1940s. Since we know they are "just" snapshots, we can look at them with a trust that Diane Arbus photos of freaks and Calvin Klein ads try to elicit with artificial candidness. Art or commercial artifice often tries to shock or convince us, to bring us to places that the most engaging of these pictures do without trying at all.
In what probably seemed to the picture-taker a failed snapshot, a boy maybe five or six is almost out of the frame at the right edge. Suited and boutonnièred, his feet are crossed in the midst of stepping away. His face is charged with impish personality as he grins off frame. Only the leg and arm of a man in a black suit can be seen off at the right. They are in front of an imposing concrete or granite building facade, whose imposing impersonality couldn't be in greater contrast with the liveliness if there were portentous music in the background.
To the left of that is a striking portrait of a trio. In a picnic setting a young woman in a middy blouse, stylish in the 1920s, is beaming at a couple far to her left. The second woman also smiles brightly, at us. Her beau sits behind her, leaning on the grass like one of the men in Manet's scandalous Déjeuner sur l'herb. Unlike in the painting, this man is far from impassive: he takes in the pretty woman before him with a look of fierce pride.
There are two echoes of that image, and such moments, on the adjacent wall. The most direct correspondence is a photo that is almost destroyed, perhaps by water damage. The left quadrant of emulsion has melted away, so it's as though we're peering through some distorting time machine. The dress and hair styles look very '40s, but the attractive couple that catch our attention look timeless. A handsome, curly haired blond, lies propped up by his girlfriend. Both are grinning. His T-shirt is pulled up it appears that she's almost been caught running her fingers through his chest hair.
Juxtapositions and groupings are an important part of this show, adding commentary or amplifying an impression here and there. In the middle of one wall are three amusing pictures with animals. Two children stand by a dog cart in one. Above that, there are two similarly garbed 19th-century children, and the boy looks as tough as the small fist-faced dog he holds. Next to them is what at first glance looks like a typical ain't-my-cat-cute shot. The black-and-white puss has poked its head tentatively over the edge of a kitchen table whose centerpiece is a pouch labeled liver. But what makes this so effective is the classic composition that renders the image so balanced and stable, and thus timeless, even though the picture-taker probably framed it quickly and snapped intuitively. More than half of the picture is the vast, unapproachable terrain of the table, its broad plaid pattern reemphasizing the strict verticals and horizontals of the upper portion, hapless kitty locked dead center.
This array of cast-off fragments of lives is a treat. Snaps is the kind of show that helps us to see how much we fail to notice in the daily welter of people around us. Despite the mundane origins of these photos, that is a lofty accomplishment indeed.

Found Poetry: A talk with Snaps's collectors

Amateur art

The offhand splendor of Snaps

by Bill Rodriguez