Japanese Realism Photography vs Snapshot Aesthetic
リアリズム写真運動 / スナップショット美学
Japanese Realism Photography comes from Photography Movements and Snapshot Aesthetic from Photographic Genres. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Japanese Realism Photography
The postwar Japanese movement Domon Ken led under 'absolutely unstaged, absolute snapshots.' Hiroshima and Children of Chikuho faced society directly, drawing amateur monthly contests into the reconnection of photography and life.
Snapshot Aesthetic
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An aesthetic that takes the failures of amateur photography since Kodak, the tilted horizon, the head cut off at the edge, the flatness of the flash, and claims them on purpose. The intimacy of the family album became a grammar for art photography from Winogrand to Goldin.
| Japanese Realism Photography | Snapshot Aesthetic | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1950–1958 | 1888– / 1960s art adoption |
| Family | Photography Movements | Photographic Genres |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | The unstaged principle / Social subjects faced directly / Close wide-angle work / Coarse-grained prints | Tilted framing / Subjects cut by the frame / Direct flash / Album intimacy |
| Best used for | Reporting on social issues that requires staying close to the people involved · Setting a shooting standard for open calls and staff-made photography | Advertising for everyday products that must not smell of a set · Private records of friends and family kept up over many years |
| Type | Headlines name the subject plainly, with no metaphor | No type, or at most a scrawl on the back of a print |
| Composition | Move in wide and keep hands and feet inside the frame | Leave the horizon crooked and keep figures cut by the frame |
| Material | Push the film, keep the grain, print on the hard side | Direct flash with its hard shadow, color left uncorrected |
| Caution | The unstaged principle is proclaimed while the subject is pressed to stay as they are, and the relation between photographer and photographed goes unexamined. | The harder amateurism is staged, the more it shows, and the absence of real time spent with the subject becomes the only thing visible. |