Overview: Vernacular photographs—those countless ordinary or utilitarian pictures made for souvenir postcards, government archives, police case files, pin-up posters, networking Web sites, and the pages of magazines, newspapers, or family albums—have been both the inspiration for and the antithesis of fine-art photography for over a century. In their struggle to gain legitimacy in the art world, fine-art photographers at the turn of the 20th century endeavored to distance their work from the amateur, commonplace, and practical photographs that had become so familiar in everyday experience. In the Vernacular presents the work of artists who chose instead to strategically deploy photography’s quotidian forms as a source of inspiration through the conscious appropriation, reworking, and interrogation of the aesthetics, content, and means of distribution associated with vernacular photography. Photographs by Walker Evans, Andy Warhol, Lee Friedlander, Cindy Sherman, Martin Parr, Nikki S. Lee, and others represented in the Art Institute’s permanent collection challenge us to reevaluate the impact, value, and status of the photographs we encounter in our daily lives. They persuade us to actively consider the ways in which photographs function as significant bearers of complex meaning, rather than mere descriptions or reflections of the world, whether they grace the walls of a museum, the pages of a magazine, the files in a cabinet, or a living-room mantel.

Martin Parr. Fashion Magazine: Fashion Shoot, New York, 1999. David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation Purchase Fund.