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Small Sumo: Television Screen Snapshots - More about the exhibition

In retrospect, it sometimes appears that the line between domestic and documentary in these vernacular photos is blurred. Vintage photographs of television screen images including (but not limited to) the funeral of a president, celebrities, natural disasters, the launch of a space shuttle, or a sumo wrestling match reveal a person's impulse to use the camera to stop time and 'grab' a souvenir image of the remarkable moment he or she is witnessing on TV. The screen snapshots can be read as an attempt by the photographer to engage with the subject being broadcast. In retrospect, it sometimes appears the line between domestic and documentary in these vernacular photos is blurred. Lee Friedlander's Little Screen Series and Weegee's 1960s film The Idiot Box are two non-vernacular examples of work focused on the visceral way the camera can interact with action images on the television screen. According to photography writer, Bernard Yenelouis, "We are long past the days of the novelty of the television in the home, with enough historical distance to forget that once it was a remarkable new thing, which affected the tone of private life by introducing sounds and images far outside it. In the 1955 Douglas Sirk film All That Heaven Allows, a key scene in it is when Jane Wyman's grown children give her a TV as a surrogate for their own departures from the home - we see Jane Wyman reflected in the black mirror of the screen as the salesman intones its praises, "Comedy, Tragedy - life's cavalcade!" The ability to have an electronic device which brings in transmissions of the world into a private realm is now intensified with the home computer, distancing ourselves even further from the early days of black-&-white TV, and the consciousness of it bringing unparalleled variety into our lives. Looking at the snapshots of the sumo wrestlers on TV reminds me of the exoticism of the medium, in which it could function like a crystal ball, showing far corners of the world, different cultures, strangeness, as part of its everyday functions. Sumo wrestling in particular is an ancient sport, with a distinct iconography, and to see it framed in a television screen, and rendered static and tactile by the snapshot itself, a story within a story, as it were, reminds me that the snapshot, in general, can be a form of dreaming elsewhere. The fantasy, embodied in a small private print, has its own trajectory far from any broadcast." Visit Vintage Photographs for snapshots of television screen images. 

Each of the eleven photographs measures 2 1/2 x 3 1/2"  The series can be purchased for $125. For more information: blevine@projectb.com   

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Bernard Yenelouis is an artist, snapshot collector and educator at the International Center of Photography. His blog on photography is One Way Street.