Pics O'Day: Square America

Square America
A gallery of vintage snapshots & vernacular photography

Square America
Square America is a site dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage snapshots from the first 3/4s of the 20th Century. Not only do these photographs contain a wealth of primary source information on how life was lived they also constitute a shadow history of photography, one too often ignored by museums and art galleries. Or at least that's what I tell people- more accurately, the site is a catalog of my obsession with vintage photographs. For the last eight years or so I've spent countless hours digging through boxes of old snapshots at flea markets (mostly here in Chicago and in NYC) and too much money buying photos on eBay. The site is my attempt to create some kind of organizational framework, however idiosyncratic, for the sprawling mess my collecting has created. More importantly, now that the site is up I can tell people that I'm a curator rather than a collector.

I should note that, in spite of the title, not all of the photos are square, nor are they all American. While I do have a special fondness for the 3.5x3.5 square snapshots of the 50s and 60s, that is by no means all I collect. I should also note that I never doctor any of the photographs I post (no photoshop or creative cropping).

Currently Square America represents only a small fraction of my collection so I'll be updating the site regularly- check the What's New section for updates as to what has been added. I hope to add a new show every month or so. I'll also be tweaking the design of the site as I go along (as you can probably tell I don't have much experience in web design) trying to make it easier to navigate etc...