Untitled (Ha! Ha!)

Since 1888, when inventor George Eastman introduced the Kodak #1 camera to the marketplace, amateur photographers have documented everyday life with the push of a button. Capturing events ranging from the extraordinary to the mundane, easy-to-use portable cameras that require little technical knowledge allowed many families to record the lives of their loved ones--at first in black and white, and later in color. These photographs--called “snapshots”--were lovingly placed into albums, envelopes, wallets, and frames to share with other people. These snapshots were drawn from a much larger collection in New York City and represent an increasingly a vanishing material medium.