Vernacular Photography
from the ontological museum archives
about us
The Ontological Museum’s vernacular photography collection focuses on 20th century snapshot photography recording the day to day life of society. Our collecting program has been intentionally random believing that almost any snapshot photograph, when studied closely has something of interest, something of value in it. Each photograph reveals a lost world. Snapshots are raw memory that save moments in time from total oblivion.
The average art enthusiast may question the value of the kind of everyday photos taken in the billions by anonymous photographers such as your uncle or mother or friends or the guy next door or on the other side of the world but value is not defined in our collection by monetary value. We think in terms of cultural value and documentary value. We believe that the lives recorded in these photographs, the moments captured, the evidence of human existence generates its own mythic qualities when separated from its nick in time and its place of origin.
THE STANDARD DISCLAIMER: “The ideas, views, opinions, attitudes, conceptions or insinuations, both explicit and implicit, contained herein may or may not be those of the International Post-Dogmatist Group as a whole or any of its constituent members, associates, affiliates, subsidiaries or institutions.”