About this artwork
This snapshot features a subject emphatically identifying themselves, writing ME on the print. Snapshots became enormously popular in the twentieth century, allowing anyone with a camera to document friends, family, and events in a casual way. Saved in albums and frames, these intimate pictures might evoke pleasant memories. But with the passing of generations, as photographs changed hands and occasionally (like this one) ended up in museums, the people who posed for these photographs might be forgotten. As if to guard against such a fate—or perhaps to point out the inadequacy of photographic representation—the sitter wrote on their picture, reminding both loved ones and museumgoers of their individual presence.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Photography and Media
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Artist
- Unknown Maker
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Title
- Untitled
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Place
- United States (Object Probably made in)
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Date
- Made 1940–1949
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Medium
- Gelatin silver print
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Dimensions
- Image approx: 10.2 × 6 cm (4 1/16 × 2 3/8 in.); Paper: 11.1 × 6.9 cm (4 3/8 × 2 3/4 in.)
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Credit Line
- Gift of Peter J. Cohen
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Reference Number
- 2017.440.4