Document Type : Research Article

Author

Assistance professor of Art research, Sistan and Baluchistan University,

Keywords

Subjects

• socialhistory and art

Extended Abstract

Vernacular Photographs as Visual Social History

Introduction: Problem statement: History and photography are closely related to the "every day" issue. Social history benefits most from family photos and snapshots (as visual documents). All kinds of "every day" photographs, known as vernacular photographs, contain information about the life and living and how the beliefs, ideals, and lifestyles of people in different human societies are present, and people are constantly faced with such photographs, and regardless of any artistic critique, they interpret and exegesis them, and express their mental impressions of the photographs in their daily lives. The purpose of this article is to clarify that, given the nature of vernacular photographs, which, without any artistic claim or aesthetic function, merely produce unique documents of the human living environment, to explain the value of analyzing its history-based content in the field of social history. The question, however, is how textual data in social history can relate the inherent qualities of vernacular photographs to methods of photo comprehension and present such photographs as a unique document in historical analysis?

Regarding the research background, among the researches related to the history of daily life and vernacular photographs, numerous works have been presented in various ways: the anthropological work of Richard Chalfen, Snapshot Versions of Life (1987), is one of the first major researches in the field of vernacular photography, and Nancy Martha West, Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia (2000), takes a Marxist approach to Kodak commodity culture and how business operations affect our relationship with photography and nostalgia. With his book Photography: A Middle-brow Art (1990), Pierre Bourdieu introduced the first comprehensive topics in the field of vernacular photography and its connection to everyday life. Gregory Paschalidis, in his article Images of History and the Optical Unconscious (2003-2004), with a general reference to the types of photographic documents in history, enumerates some basic links between social history and photography.

Methodology: In the present article, we refer to vernacular photographs as the main visual source in social history, and based on the method of historical analysis and interpretation, we introduce these photographs as visual social history. The selected statistical samples are vernacular photos based on definitions, approaches and specific examples, in order to explain the definitions and analyze the photos.

Research findings:

1. A) One of the most important functions of vernacular photos is communication with personal emotion and nostalgia. In other words, their referential content goes far beyond their explicit index function. Since the visual pleasure of a photograph is more related to emotions and mental interests than to aesthetic understanding, despite the pre-quality of vernacular photos, these are so significant because of the very personal interactive quality with their particular beholder.
2. B) Family photos are one of the most important examples of vernacular photography. Because many sociologists, psychologists, ethnographers, and anthropologists increasingly use family photographs as cultural data in research related to social life and personal experiences. Although family photos are explicitly indexed, they are also related to lost time, constantly referring to nostalgia, and making many references to the having-been-there. The folk realism that Allan Sekula has called the “realist folk myth”.
3. C) Some sociologists and cultural historians believe that family photos are in the position of creating an ideal image of family identity: these photos, by regulating leisure and entertainment, create the identity of the family social class, and even They target race and gender.

Conclusion: Features of vernacular photography include unauthorized recording of everyday events, habits, customs, beliefs and behaviors of people, special attention to everyday life, photography of ordinary and anonymous people, and most importantly, creating documents of the simplest and most private human behaviors. These vernacular features can provide unique documentation for the researcher and social historian, so that, without the possibility of using vernacular photographs, the analysis and historiography of everyday life also faces fundamental challenges. On the other hand, social history has established the status of Vernacular photography, and today, through the historical analysis of these photographs, the understanding of sociological and philosophical concepts of everyday life has become more tangible and objective.

Keywords: Vernacular photography, photographic history, social history of photography, daily life.