Photo Albums:

Images of Time and Reflections of Self

A n d r e w L. W a l k e r a n d R o s a l i n d K i m b a l l M o u l t o n

ABSTRACT: The advent of popular photography has allowed ordinary people to visu-
ally record their view of themselves and the passage of their lives. Photographs not only
record events but also allow the maker to group them for presentation in a structured
manner comparable to verbal narratives, most commonly in photo albums. We examined
more than forty albums created by amateur photographers in order to investigate the
psychological and social functions of photo albums and their value to scholars as docu-
mentations of social life. Albums are intensely personal; they create a relationship
between the presenter and the viewer; the audience is small; the possessor plays an
active role in the album's presentation; and there is an accompanying verbal narrative.
This Imrrative is crucial to the understanding of the album. This paper explores the
structure of these narratives and their role in creating the meaning of the album. In the
absence of a possessor/presenter, a narrative can be constructed by determining the type
of album being examined and establishing the personal relationships and themes within
the album. We suggest devices and procedures for reconstruction of such a narrative in
the absence of a presenter.

In the 150 years since its inception, the practice of photography has
spread widely throughout modern society. It has become integral to a
wide range of practical activities and institutions, including science,
medicine, art, crime control, advertising, insurance, politics,
intelligence-gathering, journalism, and education. One of the tasks
which confront the sociologist and cultural historian, then, is to assess
the way the practice of photography has affected the way we under-
stand ourselves and our world, and the way we engage in life.
Thanks to its sophisticated scientific, technological, and commercial
substructure, modern photography has the appearance of a very simple
process and product, but even a cursory look behind the scenes sug-
gests that the process of capturing Visual appearances is enormously
complex. The images produced are '~perhaps the most mysterious of all
the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize
as modern." (Sontag, 1977, p. 5) Analytically, if we are to understand
its impact on modern life, we must begin by posing the question of how

Address correspondence to: Prof. Andrew L. Walker, Department of Social Sciences,

Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri 65215.

Qualitative Sociology,12(2),Summer 1989 155 © 1989 Human SciencesPress

156 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

photography works at the human level. Why and how do people take,
save, and display photographic images? (Chalfen, 1987, p. 4).
Those questions can be asked of any particular usage of photography,
but since it has so many different applications which are superficially
dissimilar, some thought has to go into the choice of types of photogra-
phy to be examined. Certainly all of the application areas are interest-
ing and potentially fruitful to study, but in keeping with sociology's
focus on the operation of everyday life, we have structured our inquiry
around the way ordinary people make use of photography in the course
of their everyday life. That is, we take popular photography-amateur
photography-to be an appropriate subject for detailed sociological
analysis. In order to bring the enigma of amateur photography into
focus, let us first consider the differences between the intentions of
sophisticated and naive photographers.

The Rise of Amateur Photography

In its early years, photography was a difficult and sometimes dan-

gerous process practiced by a relatively small number of people. They
literally had to invent a form for photographic images to take. In so
doing, they borrowed heavily from the stylistic and compositional
canons of the established visual arts. Since the very act of photograph-
ing was time consuming and expensive, the photographer had to give
the composition of each exposure a great deal of thought (comparable
to the thought a painter would put into the composition of a landscape
or a portrait), and each photograph was expected to record definitively,
and to make a coherent statement about, its subject. Anything less
would have been a waste of considerable time, effort, and money.
Photographic technology changed in the late 1880's, first with the
development of dry plate techniques, followed by film packs, roll film,
new lenses, and commercial developing. These changes affected the
work of the already practicing, highly trained photographers, but their
more significant consequence was to make photography accessible to
the masses, who quickly embraced it wholeheartedly. Photography
became a pervasive feature of modern popular culture.
Whereas the previous generations of photographers tended to have a
great deal of technical and artistic training, the new amateur photog-
raphers took seriously George Eastman's dictum: '~you press the but-
ton, we do the rest." These naive amateurs were largely untutored and
less interested in art for art's sake or exactitude for exactitude's sake.
They were more interested in capturing the moments of their lives by
freezing them on film. These snapshots preserved significant personal
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 157

instants in time which might otherwise have faded or been forgotten.

They infused photography with a new spirit, helping to ~release [it]
from its Victorian corset" (King, 1978, p. 178). The older, more disci-
plined versions of photography continued to evolve (e.g. the Photo-
Secessionists), but the snapshot mentality had been born and would
exert a powerful influence over popular photography of the 20th cen-
tury. Naive a m a t e u r s cared less about the form of their images t h a n
their content, less about precision t h a n about personal meaning. They
did not intend each photograph to be a statement about technical
competence and artistic sensibility, but r a t h e r to document and pre-
serve a moment and a feeling, to embody a memory. As Michael Lesy
described this mentality:

Pictures happen. One can only trust one's sensitivity, the bounty of the
world, and the chemistry of Kodak. This is the photographic method.
And Grandma knew all about it. There was Junior in the summer sun
looking gorgeous in his diapers. Grandma was bursting with love. How
could she consume the baby and still have him? Click. Now nothing: not
age, not trouble, not dope, not tong hair, not the wrong girlfriend or
boyfriend, not death, not anything: nothing can take that moment away
from Grandma. And when she looks at the picture, all the emotion will
come b a c k . . . And if she was in any way a good photographer, it might
even come back for all of u s . . . (Lesy, 1980)

The act of photography anticipates the future by ripping the appear-

ance of a moment out of its time, creating a tangible image for the
future of what will be the past. The things photographed have their
own dynamic (which means an unseen but implied past and future).
Photography has always been about time. The sophisticated photogra-
phers of the 19th century tended to work with public t i m e - t h e conven-
tionalized continuum of the nation's or the people's past, present, and
future; the time of nature~ or the time of the universal h u m a n life
cycle. A m a t e u r photographers of the 20th century tend instead to work
with personal or familial t i m e - t h e continuum of my (or our) memo-
ries, anticipations, and e n d u r a n c e - w h i c h derives from what Bergson
called the dur~e. (Bergson, 1911) Since the a m a t e u r selects and com-
poses on the basis of psychological realities r a t h e r t h a n cultural con-
ventions, even %ad" snapshots can have an emotional immediacy t h a t
public photographs lack. While trained photographers strive for purity
of expression, amateurs tend to produce

pictures like frozen dreams, whose manifest content may be understood

at a glance but whose latent content is enmeshed in unconscious associa-
tions, cultural norms, art historical cliches, and transcendental motifs.
Pictures that are both cliches and archetypes, vulgar and miraculous,
fact and fiction. (Lesy, 1980, xiv)
158 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

Given the profusion of snapshot photographs that now exist, the

enthusiasm with which amateurs continue to photograph their worlds,
and the deep attachment which many people have for some of their
snapshots, it is not surprising that scholars from several disciplines
have begun to pay special attention to that branch of photography in
the last decade, (e.g. Coe & Gates, 1977; Chalfen, 1987; Peters &
Mergen, 1977; Corbett, 1986). Virtually all of the analysis of popular
photography, however, has been addressed to the forms and functions
of the snapshot. On the surface, this concentration is not unreasonable,
but on the basis of our research, we suspect that for ordinary people,
collections of photographs are more significant than are singular pho-
tographs. Accordingly, we want to supplement the analysis of snap-
shots with a consideration of one of the most typical formats for the
preservation and presentation of amateur photographs: the album. We
believe that an understanding of how and why photo albums work will
give some insight into the more fundamental mysteries of photography
itself.
The generalizations we wish to present are based on three years of
empirical research on photo albums. That research began when the
authors assumed curatorship of a large collection of historical amateur
photographs, which included about a dozen albums. Once we realized
their significance, we solicited albums from our students and academic
colleagues-from whom we gained access to another twenty a l b u m s -
and examined several in the Missouri State Historical Manuscripts
collection. Then we offered several public workshops in our locality on
family albums, at which we asked members of the audience to share
their albums with us, which gave us access to another dozen albums. In
almost all cases (except, of course the albums in the historical manu-
scripts collection) we spent at least several hours with each album's
possessor, both conducting a structured interview about the album and
its makers and "naturally viewing" the album. Undoubtedly our sam-
ple is skewed toward educated people of European extraction, and
people from rural or small town backgrounds are overrepressented.

The Logic of Multiple Images

We can begin by asking why amateurs so often present their photo-

graphs in sets. Most sophisticated photographers think of the goal of
the photographic process as the production of a singular, self-sufficient,
and self-contained image, perhaps because of their adherence to the
traditional standards of the prephotographic visual arts. That image
should be capable of being appreciated without reference to any
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 159

Figure 1.

other image or any text, except perhaps a title or caption. Although

they m a y display a particular image in conjunction with other
p h o t o g r a p h s - o n a wall, in a magazine, or in a portfolio-the underly-
ing convention is that even when photographs are displayed in con-
junction, as multiplicities, they should be understandable in isolation,
as singularities. Each is a statement and a world unto itself.
Naive amateurs feel less constrained by this convention. Of course,
amateurs do sometimes appreciate photographs as singularities. A
particular photograph m a y be framed and mounted in isolation on a
wall, or put on a table, or carried about in a locket, b u t it is far more
common for amateurs to display photographs conjointly in a manner
that indicates that the conjunction is an essential feature of the display
rather than incidental (e.g., Figure 1). Those conjoint displays m a y be a
160 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

cluster of framed photographs on the wall, a table or desk, a set of

photographs kept in a wallet, a group of photographs mounted in a
commercially-available montage matte, or especially a set of photo-
graphs mounted together in an album. There is apparently something
very pleasing about making and displaying such ensembles and they
are extremely commonplace.
Of the various types of conjoint display, the most enduring and
accessible for research is the photo album. Many commentators on
popular photography have recognized the near ubiquity of photo al-
bums but, to our knowledge, no one has sought to uncover their partic-
ular visual, semiotic, and social logic. By exploring the w a y photo
albums "work," we can begin to expose their psychological and social
functions.

The Presentational Logic of Photo Albums

All art comes to life in the context of a structured relationship

between the maker or presenter of a meaningful expression and the
audience of the presentation. In the absence of that interaction (even if
not face-to-face), there is no communication, merely sounds or forms or
bodily movements. Within the context of such a relationship, however,
those expressions acquire interpersonal meaning and the audience has
a chance to experience something transcendental and (one hopes) aes-
thetic. In order to grasp the way albums come to life, therefore, we
need to review the basic formal characteristics of their presentation.
To begin, photo albums are a relatively private art form since, like a
book b u t unlike a painting, they are not continuously on display, b u t
are usually stored away and brought out only when the m a k e r or
possessor chooses to share t h e m with some audience. Hence the pos-
sessor has more control over both the audience to which the art is
exposed and the circumstances of display than would be the case for a
songwriter or a painter. Consequently photo albums m a y be con-
structed with a very specific audience in mind, and the feelings or
understandings expressed in a photo album m a y be very personal or
intimate.
Second, the format of most photo albums dictates that they can be
exposed to only a relatively small audience at one time. While a
concert or a ballet or a slide show can be experienced simultaneously
by a moderate or even large group, the physical size of a photo album
precludes its viewing by a large audience. In most cases, no more than
four or five people can have access to an album at the same time.
Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 161

F i g u r e 2.
162 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

Dialogue with Sylvia Lund Kimball Regarding

Lund F a m i l y A l b u m (Accompanying Figure 2)

Photo 1

SLK: That's me and Mother.

Interviewer: Oh, isn't t h a t lovely.

Photo 2

SLK: Now this is a perfect picture of ~Fieldhead'-when it was quite

new. This was after we moved in. So there were no trees and things
t h a t came up afterwards. These were our two houses (one double house)
and this was the other house t h a t was built. And they put in lamps and
candles, and we put in gas. This half, up to here, was ours, the left-
h a n d half. The right-hand h a l f was Gingin's and Emily's. And this was
the playroom where the t r a i n was and where my dollhouse was. And
this was the front entrance, but most people came in and out at the
back. It was covered, you see, but we could go from one house to the
other-we never had a door t h r o u g h - b u t we could go from one front door
to the other without getting wet. This was my bedroom (second floor left).
And this was Maurice's bedroom. And that was Mother's and Father's
room. And this, round the corner, was a spare room. And then we had a
maid's r o o m - o n l y she was called a Mother's h e l p e r - f a c e d out back.
This faced across the m o o r s - w o n d e r f u l v i e w - b e a u t i f u l view.

Photo 3

SLK: [2nd row, little picture on left] That's in the Lake District, at
Grassmere, I think, where Wordsworth h u n g out. We used to s p e n d - i t
doesn't say so b u t - M o t h e r , me and Maurice. It might not be, hut I'm
sure it's in the Lake District, somewhere. By the look of Maurice, I
should say he was 15 and me 12. He was a very late bloomer. His voice
didn't break 'til he was over 16.

Photo 4

SLK: [Center picture] That's Seal Rocks off San Francisco. Taken by
F a t h e r when he was living out there. He lived there for three years.
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 163

He designed the engines for two ships t h a t fought in the Spanish-

American War, at the Union Iron Works, did the designs for the
engines. It says 1892.

Photo 5

SLK: [Bottom left] That is a picture of our sittingroom at Belvedere

(~Bel-caro'!) which was t h a t house where I'm playing t h a t French game
in the front door. The one we lived in after this one, Menston. We
moved to Ilkley when I was four. And do you know what happened? I
always wanted a sister and right next door to me at 'Belcaro' was a
little girl of four. And we were real buddies for six years until we
moved across the river. And her mother died a n d - b u t her father
continued to live in t h a t house forever. He married again, later. I wrote
to her last y e a r for her 80th birthday. I always write every Christmas.
She's still living. She married a doctor much older t h a n herself. He was
a widower actually. His first wife had died in childbirth. And he swore
he didn't want any children. But she did, so they did have three
children. Two of whom are divorced. It's just as bad in England as it is
here.
I n t e r v i e w e r : One of the things t h a t Rosalind observed was t h a t even
though you all moved and built several houses and things, you took
t h a t same pictures with you.
SLK: We took the same pictures with us, t h a t table I still have in the
back room. Mother made t h a t - d i d the carving on t h a t t a b l e - t h e table
was built. She went to carving class or something.

Photo 6

SLK: This is me when I had put on about 50 pounds of weight, when I

spent a year in France.
I n t e r v i e w e r : Oh, you were beautiful though. The weight looks nice on
you.
S L K : Oh. I hadn't had a period in nine months. And, you know, like a
d u m m y - I was such a fool, so absolutely naive. I was 19 a n d - t h e water
evidently, I don't know w h a t - I was always pretty erratic. I was consid-
ered a member of the faculty. I was a ~repetirice.' I used to teach the
girls to pronounce English properly because the English teacher had a
terrible pronunciation and she knew it. They didn't pay me a n y t h i n g
164 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

and I didn't pay t h e m anything. I got to live free and by golly I learnt
French because nobody spoke English. And I couldn't understand the
English teacher's English and she knew that and she asked to have an
English girl come and do that. And all I had to d o - a n d the girls were
beautifully behaved, there was no problem at all. From October to
July. That's where I put on 50 pounds because I didn't have m y period.
I ate whipped cream for desert. I didn't get any exercise because they
were afraid of me going out in the country by myself, and so on.

Photo 7

SLK: This is my grandmother, Emily, in Scarborough. And one of their

cats. This cat down here is 'Goldie.' That was Gingin's favorite cat.
About 1890. These were taken by Father.

I n t e r v i e w e r : This blue one. Do you think it was printed outdoors like

a blueprint?

SLK: Yeh, I think so. He did used to do a few blueprints like that. And
this is the sitting room at Belvedere where Maurice was born. And, you
see, here he is with his first car! In 1920.

Photo 8

SLK: There's Emily, my grandmother, when she must have been about
80. That was at Willette.' And that's 'Goldie,' Gingin's cat.

Third, there is an implicit presumption that the album's m a k e r or

possessor will be present at and preside over its display. While it is
logically possible for the possessor to simply hand the album over to an
audience for viewing, in our observations, the possessor takes an active
role in the presentation of an album, and viewers seem to expect and
welcome this participation. Of course, when an album has been made
as a gift for someone else, the m a k e r cannot always be there to partici-
pate in its viewing, but even in that case the album m a k e r usually
presides over its initial viewing by the recipient.
These first three formal f e a t u r e s - p r i v a c y , small audiences, and a
presiding possessor-suggest that the display/viewing of photo albums
entails a relationship between the maker or possessor and the audi-
ence that is more intimate and personal than is usually the case
between artists and their audiences. Of course, folk artists typically
maintain a more personal relationship with both their creations and
their audience than do public artists, but even within the realm of folk
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 165

art, the photo album maker or possessor is unusually close to his/her

audience. At a square dance or in a dance hall the musicians m a y be
personally known by the audience, but performer and audience are
physically and symbolically separated; a flower garden m a y be an
exquisite reflection of the artistic sensibilities of its gardener, but it
can be appropriately enjoyed without the presence of the gardener.
Photo albums, though, are rarely seen except in the close presence of
their maker or possessor (unless, as we shall see, they have become
detached through the vagaries of time).

Image and Narrative

This intimacy between viewer and possessor of photo albums both

implies and is strengthened by a fourth featm'e of albums, which is the
verbal narrative which accompanies the photographic images (e.g.,
Figure 2). The importance of this narrative to the experience of photo
albums cannot be overstated. In the introduction to his book on family
photographs, Michael Lesy captures the power of those narratives:

•.. we'd sit in the kitchen and start looking at the pictures. They'd go
through them, quickly at first, one after the other or one page after the
other. But then it always happened: we'd get to one picture or one page
and they'd stop, and it was almost as if a little b o n e . . , cracked, and
they'd sit up and rise back and start talking, looking right through me,
and then they'd be gone. Back there. Gone. And they'd come back again
and say something, and then go back and start talking again; and I never
said a goddamn word except "yes" because I was back there with them,
riding the wave, holding the table, my eyes on theirs, my eyes in theirs,
breathing till it passed and the next one came. Wave after wave: recapit-
ulation, conjunction, revelation. Again and a g a i n . . .
o.. the people told me stories; they spoke parables; they made confes-
sions. They told me tales; they recounted epics; they recited myths. They
told me the way things really a r e . . . They sat alone at the center, heroes
and heroines to whom it all flowed, from which it all came. They passed
judgement. They held the scales. They told me the Truth (Lesy, 1980,
xiv).

Every photo album is constructed on the basis of some implicit

narrative, although as Lesy suggests, the narrative m a y take several
different approaches. Some narratives are addressed to the reality t h a t
lies behind the images, so t h a t the narrative and the photographs are
related as text is to illustrations. In this case, the narrative provides a
context for interpreting the photographs. Since every photograph is a
seamless web of details, the challenge of m a k i n g sense of any photo-
166 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

graph is perceptually to select and organize details into a meaning-

conveying whole. Various branches of formal photography have bor-
rowed and developed compositional conventions which organize the
image to suggest its meaning (e.g., techniques of composition which
indicate subject/context differentiation), but the photographs which
comprise photo albums are not likely to be "well" structured by
these conventions for several reasons. First, amateur photographers
are often unaware of the difference between visual perception and
photographic representation, so they photograph as they see, rather
than on the basis of conventions of composition. Second, snapshot
photography-because of its relative spontaneity, the photographer's
lack of control over the subject matter, and the dynamic quality of its
subject matter-minimizes the photographer's ability to compose the
image in accordance with conventions. Third, a photograph might be
included in an album to illustrate something it was not composed to
express; that is, some feature of the photograph illustrates something
pertinent to the theme of the album, even though that particular
feature was compositionally treated as an incidental detail when the
photograph was originally produced. For these reasons, the images
which comprise a photo album are likely to be insufficient to express
adequately the meaning of the album, and thus a narrative is required.
Not all narratives explicitly tell the story of the album, though. Some
focus more immediately on the images themselves. Going over an
album with its possessor often elicits comments such as "I particularly
like this picture because it shows Aunt Mary smiling, which she
usually wouldn't do when her picture was being taken," or '~his picture
was taken with my new camera before I knew how to compensate for
neon lights," or "look how weird his eyes look in this picture," or "this
was the view from our balcony." The common feature of comments
such as these is that they directly address the photographic image
itself rather than the reality which underlies the image. They recog-
nize the problematic relationship between photograph and reality:
that there is an incomplete correspondence between a photographic
image and the reality it records, that a photograph is the product of a
set of technological processes which may function in an unanticipated
fashion, that an active camera changes the reality it is engaged in,
that some features of the world are not photographable, that an ama-
teur's photograph is rarely identical to the photograph s/he intended to
produce, and so on. Like the other type of narrative, these comments
provide the viewer with an interpretive framework for the images, but
the focus is different. The first type supplies that framework by telling
more about the subject matter than is displayed in the pictures, while
the second type explains the relationship between the pictures them-
selves and the subjective context in which they were produced (Figure 3).
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 167

Figure 3.

Although these two Wpes of narrative are structurally somewhat

different, they have the same function: to direct the viewing and
interpretation of each image in accordance with its meaning in rela-
tion to the themes of the entire album. This is not to say that the
narrative (rather than the images) necessarily expresses the themes
authoritatively or definitively, since photographs are likely to have far
greater impact and credibility than do words, but the words seem to
make the experience of an album more compatible with the way we
share thoughts and feelings with others.
It would be, of course, a mistake to presume that the narrative is an
objectively true and accurate account of the situations and circum-
stances portrayed in the album. To the contrary, the narrative (and
168 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

indeed the album) is profoundly subjective, egocentric, interpretive,

speculative, and self-serving. It is our distinct impression, based on
hearing dozens of album narratives, that they deliberately cover up as
much as they disclose, that they distort as much as they display. But
such is the consciousness of modern society. Both photographs and
narratives depict not objective reality, but rather what Alfred Schutz
called the ~tJmwelt": a life context to which meaning has been subjec-
tively assigned (Schutz, 1967). Most album narratives are epics or
sagas; we might almost say that most are mythic.
When we consider the narrative as part of the typical presentation of
a photo album, several other formal features of the presentation come
into view. First, an accompanying narrative makes the presentation of
a photo album more continuous than it would be if it were comprised
only of images. The images themselves are usually discontinuous; they
are isolated from each other, separated not only by the compositional
form of each but even more clearly by the margin of empty page which
usually surrounds each photograph. While several different photo-
graphs may be mounted on the same page and thus be visually co-
present, the visual logic of photographs and their framing strongly
suggests that each is a whole to be understood only by reference to
itself. There may be implicit visual continuities, but the accompanying
narrative often functions to provide explicit transitions from one im-
age to the next, with lines like '~his next picture was taken after we
got home," or "this is another view of our campsite taken as we were
leaving." Most narratives take the discreteness of the photographs into
account and thus are not wholly continuous in their flow, but in almost
any case the narrative makes explicit some sort of thematic device for
establishing a relationship between disparate images.
A second feature of albums resulting from the conjunction of images
and narrative is that there is a pace and rhythm to the presentation
which is usually not apparent from the physical arrangement of the
photographs themselves. Obviously there would be a rhythm to the
experience of a photo album just by virtue of the movement of atten-
tion from one photograph to the next, but when the images are accom-
panied by a narrative, the flow of attention becomes more complex as
some images are lingered over, some prompt long stories or digres-
sions, and some are passed over hastily. Furthermore, the narrative
may dictate a nonlinear review of the images. Telling a story about one
image may lead attention back to some previously attended image for
clarification, contrast, or confirmation.
One final feature of the presentation is that while the images them-
selves are obviously fixed, the accompanying narrative is usually more
or less spontaneous and open to participation by the viewer. The
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 169

spontaneity is far from absolute, since the presenter almost inevitably

knows what the album is "about," but the story can be altered to suit
the particular audience, time constraints, and mood of the presenter
and audience, and so on. We have heard some narratives which were so
structured that they seemed to be recitations. Others seemed to be
constructed afresh tbr that particular viewing. Regardless of their
degree of spontaneiW, however, it seems likely that the underlying
themes of the narrative have to be implicit in the construction of the
album itself.
When the album is analytically understood to be composed of both a
set of photographs and a narrative, we can begin to see the remarkable
complexity of this relatively modern form of folk art. Albums are
potentially very personal; they involve the audience and presenter in a
very close relationship; they are both linear and iconic; they are com-
posed of both images and narrative; they are both fixed and sponta-
neous; they have both pace and rhythm; and they involve the presenter
and the audience in an explicit dialogue. Given this set of unusual
characteristics, they are unique artistic vehicles for expressing com-
plex ideas in a format that does not require a great deal of training,
skill, or equipment. Scholars are only beginning to realize that photo
albums are a common but important device through which people
make lasting statements about their lives and the things that are
important to them. (e.g. Krause, 1980; Entin, 1980). It is reasonable to
expect the academic community to pay more attention to photo-
albums, both as artistic expression and as sources of social and histori-
cal data. Perhaps more nonacademic persons will come to realize that
the photo albums available to them are rich statements of how their
predecessors and contemporaries understand their lives and want
their lives to be understood by others. (e.g. Buckland, 1987; Hirsch,
1981). This is not to say that the interpretation of an album is obvious.
However, parodoxically, we do contend that it may be easier to inter-
pret an album than a single photographic image.

The Interpretation of Photo Albums

Given our comments above on the mythic character of most photo

albums, we are very wary of any effort to glean objective, valid, and
reliable facts from an album. It is simply too easy to misrepresent
photographically (either self-consciously or not). Third class travellers
may photograph themselves in front of first class accommodations,
childless couples may have themselves photographed with neighbors'
children, relatives who haven't spoken to each other in years may
170 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

Figure 4.

assume poses of familiarity for the photographer, hunters who habitually

return empty-handed from the hunt may have themselves photographed
with the only deer they ever shot, and so on. The analyst must continually
keep in mind that photography conveys a world of appearances and that
it does not take m u c h inventiveness to create fleeting appearances.
(For example, the gaiety and tranquility in Figure 4 belie the reality in
which they were produced: central European Jewish life in the years
immediately preceding World War II.)
We are well aware that upon very detailed inspection it is often possible
to detect ~Talse notes" in a photograph and thereupon make informed
guesses about the underlying objective and/or psychological reality that is
being manipulated for the camera's eye. We think there is a place for
interpretation of that sort, but we caution that it requires a great deal of
competence and produces hypotheses rather than facts. Instead, we are
more inclined to use an album as an entry into the subjective world of its
maker, comparable perhaps, to the way a diary might be used. But while a
diary more or less explicitly tells its story, an album only implies its story.
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 171

Hence the process of interpretation of an album is more inferential and

imaginative than the interpretation of a diary.
Of course, the problems of interpretation is largely mitigated if the
viewer has access not only to an album but also to a p r e s e n t e r -
someone who can ~explain" it. As we noted above, the production of a
narrative seems to be a natural expectation, so the careful collector
should have no problems eliciting an ~explanation" as long as ordinary
social decorum is observed. We have asked dozens of people (some
acquaintances, some strangers) to ~show" us their albums, and invari-
ably" the album's possessor has spontaneously produced a narrative to
accompany the images. Since the production of the narrative is nor-
matively interactive, we (as viewers) have generally found it easy to
bring the explanation around to address features in which we had
more interest than the narrator. Hence, so long as the viewer is
content to recover the natural interpretation of the album and is
capable of sustained interaction with its possessor, voluminous inter-
pretation of the album and substantial entry into the subjective world
of the album m a k e r should be possible.
If, however, a narrator is unavailable, interpretation is far more
problematic. The viewer m a y find an old album at a r u m m a g e sale, a
museum or library, or among the effects of a deceased relative and leaf
through it, trying to make sense of the fuzzy photographs of unknown
people in unidentified locales proudly displaying their wedding attire
or their newborn child, or celebrating some unknown occasion. The
viewing experience can be difficult because the images seem so famil-
iar, so close to recognition, b u t the people are all strangers and the
places, things, and occasions refuse to disclose their significance. In the
face of such tantalizing obscurity, the most reasonable response m a y
be to peruse the album for particular photographs that are either
aesthetically pleasing or accidentally meaningful and then t u r n to
something more accessible. If, however, the viewer has some reason to
want to discover the latent meaning, it is possible to pierce the obscu-
rity. With some interpretive effort, we discover that a photo album
~can possess the qualities we ordinarily look for in a work of a r t - t h e
power to communicate, the authority to demand attention, composi-
tional niceties, a transcendent depth to draw us into the image and
beyond it (King, 1978, p. 183)."
The interpretive technique which we use rests on the basic assump-
tion that every album is a thematic whole and that the meaning of
each particular image is somehow related to the story that unfolds
through the entire set of images. Normally the thematic continuity of
the album is made explicit by the accompanying narrative, so our
technique entails an inductive reconstruction of the narrative in order
to recover the context of each particular photograph. (See Heilbrun
172 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

(1976) and Novotny (1976) for examples of the use of pseudo narrative
to explicate 'Tound" photographs.)

Types of Albums
The first step in t h a t process is to determine what the album is about.
Every album is about something, and we have observed that there are
not very m a n y different subject-matters commonly addressed by photo
albums. The most frequent subject is the maker's family, and we would
guess that in America alone literally millions of family albums have
been produced in the past century. In order to be able to recognize a
family album, the analyst should realize that a family is not simply a
set of persons; it is instead a set of evolving relationships, activities
and achievements through which those relationships are enacted, a set
of places which are the settings for those relationships, various rituals
which celebrate those relationships, and a set of possessions (Hirsch,
1981, chap. 3). A family album pictorially weaves together images of
each of these elements to produce a visual history documenting a
miniature society which shapes, and in t u r n is shaped by, each suc-
ceeding generation. Perhaps the most obvious way to identify a family
album is by the presence of multi-generational photographs or birth-
celebrating images.
Another common album type is the event-record. Events documented
by photo albums may be private, such as a wedding or a retirement
party, or public, such as a ceremonial religious or political occasion.
Stories about events are, of course, constructed on the basis of a different
logic from stories about families, so the thematic elements of the photo-
graphs in event-record albums are likely to be different. These albums
address questions of who was there, the geographic and symbolic location
of the event, and the relationship of the photographer to the event. The
images in an event-record album are likely to be arranged chronologi-
cally, which m a y aid in both identification and interpretation.
A particular type of event that is a very common subject of photo
albums is the trip (or vacation or holiday). One of the most widely
practiced applications of photography in the contemporary world is
travel photography, and photographic travelogues can be found in
m a n y contemporary households. Sontag r e m a r k s that:
It seems positively unnataral to travel for pleasure without taking a camera
along. Photographs wilt offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made,
that the program was carried out, that fun was had (Sontag, 1977, p. 9).
Stories about leaving home are traditional in our culture. They serve
as vehicles for commenting not only on what is out there and how it
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 173

feels to be out there, but also on what is so special about home and how
it feels to be home.
Travelogues rely heavily on two types of photograph. One t y p e - t h e
picturesque p h o t o g r a p h - a t t e m p t s to reproduce a naturally occurring
scene which in some w a y evokes the meaning of the environs being
visited. The other type of travel photograph, the life-on-the-road photo-
graph, addresses the mundane, but out of the ordinary, features of life
away from home: restaurants and accommodations, new acquain-
tances, and especially the condition of the travel party. Travel albums
can be difficult to decode, because although the album as a whole is
about the traveler(s), each particular photo is about the world traveled
through. Hence the photographs direct the viewer's attention away
from the real subject of the album, and the viewer gets diverted trying
to figure out whether the scene is Lake Louise or Lake Victoria when
the album is really about the travelers. More so than most other types
of albums, travelogues are generally arranged chronologically, but the
analyst should attend carefully to photographs that are out of se-
quence, since they have usually been presented anachronistically for
some thematic reason.
Another album type whose logic is somewhat similar to the travel
album might be termed the autobiographical album, not because it is
filled with images of the maker, but rather because it is filled with
images of the people, places and things that were important to the
maker. Here again, the true thematic subject of the album visually
appears only incidentally, pictured with the people or things and at the
places that have been decisively meaningful in the subject's life (e.g.
Buckland, 1987). As in the travel album, the photographs are a bit
misleading because they suggest that their subjects comprise the al-
bum's theme, when it is really the significance of their content to the
album's maker that is the album's theme. On first examination, auto-
biographical albums can seem structureless: pictures of a farmhouse, a
football team picture, a '57 Ford station wagon, street scenes taken
from a fourth story window, a cat in a chair, a group of people sitting
around a table, and so on. The images themselves seem incoherent
unless the viewer realizes that the farmhouse is a birthplace, one of the
football players (the second one from the left) was a high school sweet-
heart, the station wagon was the album-maker's first car, the cat was
acquired after the death of a child, and so on. The whole assemblage
begins to acquire coherence when the viewer treats it as the context for
a life, rather than things whose meaning arise from their interrela-
tionship.
A final common type of album focuses on some special interest of the
maker, such as a hobby (every model plane I built since I was 8), a
174 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

F i g u r e 5.

fascination (steam locomotives; see Figure 5), an avocation (all the

mules I raised), a vocation (all the mechanical valves I designed), or an
object of adoration (the Beatles). A late 19th century promoter of
photography wrote:

Photography has been truly described as the handmaid of the arts and
sciences. It may also be appropriately termed the companion of our
hobbies, for there is scarcely a study, sport, or pastime in connection with
which photography does not occupy an important position as a recorder,
second only to the pen in value (Lund, 1895, p. 55).

The subjects of this category of album are quite diverse, but special
interest albums are recognizable by their exclusive concentration on a
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 175

single subject and their tendency to be internally redundant. Indeed,

the casual viewer may be mystified by the high degree of apparent
repetition within special interest albums, but to the maker that repeti-
tion is an endlessly interesting variation. The disinterested viewer has
neither the affect nor the background knowledge to note the details
that make each particular image meaningfully unique, but that is
precisely the difference between the fascinated album-maker and the
disinterested album-viewer.

Implicit Structure of Family Albums

While this brief discussion of album types is by no means exhaustive,

it should be sufficient to establish that there are various different
types, constructed on the basis of different intents, meant for different
audiences, and utilizing different presentational and organizational
logics. If a viewer wants to construct a narrative to explicate some
album, the first step is to decide what type of album s/he is dealing
with, since each type implies a different narrative form. Once the
album type has been identified, the viewer can begin to imagine the
structure of a narrative which would reasonably accompany it. If, for
instance, it is a family album, s/he might then try to discover which
persons are family members, which are close family friends, and which
are incidental contacts. Then s/he might try to decipher the intra-
family relationships, first by using the common-sense principle that
pictures of chronologically senior family members are likely to be
placed toward the beginning of the album and later members are likely
to be placed toward the end, and second by examining particular
images for kinesic (body language) and/or proxemic (microgeography)
displays of affiliation and deference (Figure 6).
Once the viewer has some idea of the cast of characters and their
interrelationships, s/he can look for the themes which pertain to the
family as a whole. Family narratives often utilize the tension between
diversity and similarity or between change and continuity to express
the nature of the solidarity and endurance of the family. (Hirsh, 1981,
p. 32) Careful examination of the album may provide clues as to what
kind of continuity is being expressed. To what extent and in what ways
are family members portrayed separately, conveying individual (per-
sonal) characteristics and courses of action, and to what extent are
they portrayed collectively and engaged in collective activities? When
they are portrayed collectively, are they engaged in some ritual obser-
vance (50th anniversary celebration or bar mitzvah) or in some ordi-
nary collective venture (launching the new boat)? Are different family
176 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

members portrayed on the same spot or in the same pose, or are the
pictures t a k e n at m a n y different locations?
By comparing the tone and mood of earlier photographs with later
photographs, we can infer the album-maker's sense of how the family
has changed over the years. Are possessions and/or status symbols
more prominently portrayed earlier or later? How does the micro-
geography of group poses change? Are there more individual photo-
graphs earlier or later? As particular family members grow up, are
they portrayed as basically the same throughout the album? What, if
any, sense of progress, deterioration, revitalization, or collective evolu-
tion comes through the entire album-as-sequence?
These questions are m e a n t only to suggest the kind of analytic
initiative t h a t can be used to reconstruct the narrative of a family
album. The point is t h a t although a family is a very complex and
abstract transpersonal entity, and although there are numerous differ~
ent versions of the family, still there is a common structure underlying
most stories about particular families. With careful sleuthing, the

F i g u r e 6.
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 177

analyst can construct a narrative which, although it is probably nei-

ther entirely accurate nor necessarily a close approximation of the
actual narrative which the album-maker would have spontaneously
expressed, is close enough to the latent original to provide an interpre-
tive framework for assigning meaning to any particular photograph in
the album.

implicit Structure of Travel Albums

The structure and function of travel stories is very different from

family stories, so the analyst would have to ask a different set of
questions and search for a different set of clues to reconstruct the
narrative of a travel album. Stories about travel vary considerably
according to the nature of the travel party, the familiarity of the
travelers with the places visited, the conventionality of the travel and
the places visited~ the background knowledge or special interests of the
traveler/album-maker, and the intended audience of the album. None
of these features is likely to be visually obvious, but the analyst can
inspect the album closely and make some informed guesses. Stories
about travel with a large or unusual group tend to give a lot of
attention to fellow-travelers and the relationships within the travel
party, while stories about travel alone or with a familiar group usually
focus more exclusively on the sights seen. Travel by unconventional
means tends to produce stories about the travel itself, while conven-
tional travel tends to be invisible (unless it has status implications).
Travel to conventional (tourist) places seems to produce conven-
tionalized (cliched) photographs for two reasons. First, many tourist
spots are managed by physically channeling the visitors into corridors
which lead from one ~viewing location" to the next (Freund, 1980, p.
202). Most visitors therefore view (and photograph) the site from the
same vantage point (Chalfen, 1987, pp. 113ff). Indeed, most amateur
photographs of the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, or the
Great Pyramid of Cheops bear a strong resemblance to each other
because they are taken from the same vantage point. But it is also true
that all famous tourist attractions have been photographed by profes-
sional photographers for well over a century and their images have
been very widely disseminated, so there is now something like a canon
of famous photographic views to which most people interested in fara-
way places have been repeatedly exposed. Not surprisingly, when
amateurs have the opportunity to photograph the same sights, they
have a strong tendency to try to reproduce the conventions.
Most travel albums unfold chronologically, but there is a noticeable
178 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

difference between albums which concern themselves with a single

trip and those which record a series of trips. Single trip albums are
often constructed on the basis of a ~getting there/being there/coming
home" logic, which may be relatively easy to decipher. The first set of
photographs will introduce the travel party, indicate the circum-
stances under which they departed, portray the process of travel, and
perhaps indicate something of the way relationships evolve within the
travel party. The middle set of photographs will address what was seen
at the destination, what the various members of the travel party did at
the destination, how the members of the party felt about being at the
destination, and what outsiders became significant to the party at the
destination. An important clue to the nature of the trip can be derived
from considering the relative frequency of picturesque photographs
compared to ~'life away from home" photographs when the party is at
its destination. If ~life away from home" photographs are predominant,
the analyst might surmise that the trip was undertaken as a social
event, while if picturesque photographs are predominant it might be
plausible to suppose that the trip was undertaken to experience the
destination itself. The final set of simple trip photographs-coming
h o m e - i s potentially very interesting since it concerns how travelers
(who have been changed by their experiences) renegotiate travel cir-
cumstances, deal with the demise of the travel party, and anticipate their
reintegration into everyday life. Oftentimes, though, this final section is
highly abbreviated, indicating perhaps that the travelers were exhausted,
unhappy about returning home, or maybe even that soured relationships
within the travel party were a source of discomfort.
Travel albums which record multiple trips may be more difficult to
decipher because they lack the unitary wholeness of single trip rec-
ords. Since the various trips included in the album were usually not
undertaken by a single travel party, the album as a whole cannot
address the nature and evolution of any set of on-going relationships
(although particular pictures might do so). Instead it usually becomes a
more egocentric statement of where the maker has been, whom s/he
has visited, and how s/he manages the mechanics of travel. Pictures of
~'getting there" and "coming home" tend not to appear in these albums;
indeed there is a strong tendency for picturesque photographs to pre-
dominate. On the surface, this exclusive concern with ~'what I saw"
makes multiple trip albums easy to understand because the analyst is
likely to recognize the locales portrayed (this is when I went to the
Grand Canyon, this is when I went to the Yucatan, this is when I went
to Jamaica . . . . ) but precisely because those photographs tend to be
conventionalized it is much harder for the analyst to infer what would
be said to accompany the presentation.
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 179

Figure 7.

Still, inferences about the accompanying narrative can be made on

the basis of continuities between the various trip records. Is some
common feature of all the locales (e.g., native textiles or boats) repeat-
edly portrayed? Are places primarily portrayed as assemblages of
physical objects or as locations for activities? What kind of people are
portrayed (e.g., natives going about their business, natives who would
have a relationship with a visitor, or other travelers)? What general
types of attractions are repeatedly portrayed? Do the photographs tend
to be close-ups which focus on details or wide-angle shots which convey
the general layout of the location? Do the photographs put the loca-
tions in the '~best light" or are imperfections and less-than-ideal situa-
tions included? Do the photographs concentrate on sights seen, or do
they also visualize the life of the traveler? (Figure 7).
By looking for repeated visual themes, the analyst may get some
sense of the overall approach the album-maker took to travel and the
180 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

kind of stories which s/he would be likely to tell about his/her travels.
As was indicated earlier, we are inclined to think that the deep struc-
ture of travel stories is an explication of the traveler him/herself, but
that the subject is usually implied rather than visually or verbally
explicit. Hence, although the analyst is confronted with images of
places and things, and is trying to infer what the album-maker would
say in reference to those images, the intermediate step is to infer what
interests and intentions led the album-maker to construct the album
out of these images in the first place. The goal is to be able eventually
to see the images through the eyes of the album-maker.

Themes as the Basis for Interpretation

Without going into the details of how any of the other album-types
might be reconstructed, we suggest in general that just as there are a
limited number of album-types, so also there are a limited number of
story-types that would be told regarding each particular album type.
Once the analyst has deduced the overall theme of the album, it is
possible to make some educated guesses about the general structure of
the narrative which would accompany it, and by comparative inspec-
tion of the entire set of photographs to make some specific estimates of
the substantive comments that would accompany, explain, and expli-
cate the images. There is, of course, no way of knowing exactly how
accurate the reconstruction is, but the effort has been successful ff it
enables the analyst to pierce the opacity of albums unaccompanied by
a narrative. If, for instance, the analyst realized that some of the
photographs in a travel album concentrate on architectural features,
s/he might well find that other photographs which do not seem to have
any particular significance will reveal particular architectural fea-
tures whose construction is not highlighted by the composition of the
photographs themselves.
This analytic technique of reconstructing the narrative permits the
analyst to interact with the album. The images and the structural
features of the album itself are used to make deductions about the
interests and intentions of the album-maker, and then those hypoth-
eses about the album-maker are used in turn to provide an interpretive
context for each image. As each image is better understood by the
analyst, his/her inferences about the album-maker become more re-
fined, leading back to better appreciation of the images, and so on. The
technique is somewhat awkward and tentative for beginners, but with
some practice and exposure to a variety of albums, it becomes easier.
The intent of this technique is to enable the analyst to think about
the album as a unitary, structured, meaning-conveying whole, rather
 Photo Albums: Images of Time and Reflections of Self 181

Figure 8.

than an arbitrary collection. Photo albums are constructed by people

who are making organized and coherent statements about very com-
plex subjective realities (Chalfen, 1987, chap. 1). Just as no single
sentence is sufficient to express a complex thought, so also no single
photograph is sufficient to capture or illustrate what it is that people
think of themselves as being in the midst of. An organized and the-
matized set of sentences will better describe reality, as will an orga-
nized and thematized set of photographs. The visual fine arts have
consciously- and interpersonally evolved sophisticated conventions for
making deeply intricate statements about the human condition in a
single image, but amateur photographers rarely have the training,
discipline, or interest to construct their images according to those
conventions. Hence their penchant for displaying their photographs as
multiplicities, and hence the prevalence and persistence of photo al-
bums.
It has been remarked that we have a uniquely rich grasp of the
profound changes of the 19th century because for the first time, photog-
raphers were there to create a living documentary of those changes
(Lucie-Smith, 1975, p. 39). But in fact, because of the small number of
photographers, their relatively elite position in society, and the rigid
conventions within which they worked, their photographic legacy is
more narrow in its scope than is commonly supposed. Popular photog-
raphy in the 20th century has escaped those limits, and has produced
an even richer documentation of social life because it has been brought
to the heart of the private lives of nearly the entire range of ordinary
people. We have been able to see ourselves more completely than have
most other peoples.
But, as we have already noted, the corresponding weakness of much
amateur photography is that it lacks the command of the medium to be
able to make definitive, authoritative statements. Hence it is in their
182 Q U A L I T A T I V E SOCIOLOGY

albums that ordinary people capture the complex memories, express

the deep feelings, and bind together the fragmented experiences of
modern private life into more or less coherent visual statements. What
is surprising is not that ordinary people can be so expressive, but
rather that their work would be so long ignored by scholars.

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Chalfen, R.
1987 Snapshot Versions of Life. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University
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Coe, B. & Gates, P.
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Corbett, K.
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