Abstract

Constituting the "defining other" of art photography, amateur photographic practices have long been neglected or specifically excluded from official histories of photography. Even the term "amateur" - often linguistically interchanged with the conceptually distinct terms "vernacular," "folk," "popular," and "mass" - has historically been characterized by semantic ambiguity, connoting both the joys of the pastime and a lack in professional skill. In recent years, however, contemporary amateur photographs have been capturing the curatorial imagination. On the one hand, this is motivated by the institutional and political impetus to engage with personal, local heritage, rather than official, national heritage alone. Amateur photographs, with their apparent rawness, immediacy and everydayness, may afford the museum with a more credible and authentic record of "real life" and enable the display of polyvocal narratives. On the other hand, the changing digital media landscape that has given rise to social media and networking has opened up opportunities for museums to diversify their activities and to reach new audiences through public-contributed content. In response to these developments, this essay asks: How has amateur photography acquired a protagonist role in contemporary museum displays? It will explore this question through contrasting case studies of exhibitions in the US and Europe, which have incorporated user-contributed photographic content in their displays. We thus discuss how everyday photographic creativity and the raw materials of other people's (hi)stories serve as a means to interact with institutionally constructed histories.