Pictures from a Drawer

Click any image for a larger view.



Click any image for a larger view.


Click any image for a larger view.



Click any image for a larger view.




WHEN I FIRST GAZED UPON THESE PRISON PHOTOGRAPHS, I COULD NOT HELP but feel the intense emotional and powerful impact they project. It is a miracle that they even survived, were it not for the foresight of Bruce Jackson, who stumbled upon them in a prison drawer when he was photographing a state prison farm in Cummings, Arkansas. The year was 1975, and old pictures like that were considered junk. Without question, had fate not put Mr. Jackson there at that moment, it would not have been long before they were tossed in the trash.

I have collected anonymous snapshots, including police mugshots, for nearly 15 years, and do so because of their honesty and directness. These portraits are incredible. Taken at the low point of someone’s life between the years of 1915 - 1940, they reveal a poignant struggle for survival during times of intense racism, economic and social despair. Prison is a horrible place. It always has been, it always will be.

For more than 40 years, Bruce Jackson has been documenting—in books, photographs, audio recording and film—inmates’ lives in American prisons. The 121 images are published together for the first time in a remarkable new book, Pictures from a Drawer. As Jackson describes in an absorbing introduction, the function of these photos was not portraiture— their function was to “fold a person into the controlled space of a dossier.” Here, freed from their prison “jackets” and printed at sizes far larger than their originals, these one-time ID photos have now become portraits. Jackson’s restoration transforms what were small bureaucratic artifacts into moving images of real men and women. Pictures from a Drawer also contains an extraordinary description of everyday life at Cummins prison in the 1950s, written originally by hand and presented to Jackson in 1973 by its author, a longtime inmate.

Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture, University at Buffalo. He is the author of more than 20 other books, including The Story Is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories (Temple), a documentary filmmaker and photographer. The French government named him Chevalier in L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest honor in the arts and humanities.

To order the book and learn more, just go to Temple Press here.

Not Your Grandmother’s Snapshots

HERE ARE SOME SNAPSHOTS for your Thursday.

Stranger Than Strange

(Above) Multiple Exposures, c. 1960s - 1970s.

(Above) Family Faces Apparition, c. 1930s
(Above) Lonely Chair, c. 1940s
(Above) Ghoul and TV, c. 1930s
(Above) Creepy Clown, c. 1910s
(Above) Cross Dresser, c. 1940s
(Above) Pet Funeral, c. 1960s


ANONYMOUS PHOTOGRAPHS CAN BE STRANGE, mainly because we have little to no context in which to benchmark our understanding of what we are looking at. Here are a few odd ducks from the Accidental Mysteries collection of found, anonymous snapshots.

Two Snapshots of Two Objects

Click either image for a larger view.

WHAT QUALITIES MAKE A PHOTOGRAPH ABOVE AVERAGE? TO THAT POINT, WHAT MAKES A PHOTOGRAPH GREAT? Well, scholars and collectors have been mulling over that question for a century or so. Every time “the heads” think they have that question figured out, an artist comes along to turn that definition on it’s ear. Maybe that’s the answer then.

These two photographs I spotted on eBay are stunning examples of pictures that perhaps, and most likely, were never meant to be exceptional. More than likely they were made simply to document the objects in the photographs above. But something happened along the way in this anonymous person’s effort. They bumped into the extraordinary. Or, maybe extraordinary found them.

Photograph the new chairs and table! Easy enough. “Ah-h darn, the chairs are all leaning against the table, oh well, I’m not going down there to set them up.” Click. Done.

Or, maybe not. Did the photographer actually see the fact that the table and chairs had been arranged to now resemble a big white multi-legged bug sitting there in the diagonal shadow? Probably not. But maybe! Naa-aaaa. And that is where the fun starts in collecting vernacular photography. You, the collector becomes the photographer, a curator within a sea of bad photographs, searching for the images YOU say are worthy.

The photograph of the tent-like house is, like the table and chairs, exceptional in the presentation of iconic objects seen in a new way. With the table and chairs—they are no longer table and chairs. The photograph (from the high vantage point) has presented these utilitarian objects in such a way as to transform them. And the house—we are looking at an archetypal house shape, but there is no way in or out. No windows. No door. The covering hides the real house underneath. Or is it a house? As an image, it is simply planes of light and dark, photographed from slightly above. It is a strong image, in your face and slightly disturbing.

This is why vernacular photography is exciting. You, the viewer, have the opportunity to be the juror of the show, to award first prize to any image you think is worthy. You are the curator too, because you can select any image you think should be in your museum.

And if you do a great job in selecting the images for your “museum,” people will come.