They are quick notations of everyday life. While attempting to provide a sense of a larger context, rarely do they attempt to elevate a fleeting scene by means of embellishment, or to stylize people in any dramatic way. Our expectations for snapshots, as for the small sketch, are rather low. With a snapshot, what you see is what you see. Some are pretty, some are funny, others are odd, and some, more often than not, are just plain boring.
Snapshots are, for better or worse, the hoi polloi of the photographic world.
When I first saw Jack Pierson's photographs at the 1993 Whitney Biennial I was moved, but also disturbed by their strangeness. Here were snapshots, yet they were large, ungainly and simply tacked to the wall. I remember huge pictures of flowers in a field, some kind of a still-life, and clothes on a line blowing about in the wind. The images were blurry, the colors were bright, and the overall tone seemed to be one of almost blatant cheerfulness. My being disturbed by them was a good sign because it meant that my eye was taking in something unfamiliar to me.