Nelson-Atkins exhibit features amateur photos

Unknown maker, American. Double Exposure: Girls with dolls and father, ca. 1945. Gelatin silver print, 3 3⁄4 x 2 1⁄2 inches. Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2015.9.111. 

Unknown maker, American. Double Exposure: Girls with dolls and father, ca. 1945. Gelatin silver print, 3 3⁄4 x 2 1⁄2
inches. Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2015.9.111.

Long before Instagram, people were taking amateur photographs. A new exhibit opening April 15 at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art features some of them, photos of pets, baseball games, Christmas trees, amateur plays, vacation fun, and what you might call the first selfies – people snapping their own images in mirrors.

 An Anonymous Art: American Snapshots from the Peter J. Cohen Gift is based on a gift of 350 photos given to the Nelson by Cohen, an investment banker who lives in New York. He began buying snapshots at a flea market in 1991, according to the Nelson-Atkins, eventually collecting more than 50,000 and giving away about 12,000 of those.

“The large themes of this exhibition have tremendous continuity,” said Keith F. Davis, senior curator of photography at the museum. “Snapshots represent a collective visual unconsciousness of 20th-century American culture – a connection to basic human concerns that is both direct and mysterious.”

Davis picked more than 200 snapshots from Cohen’s gift to feature in the exhibit.

An Anonymous Art runs through Sept 4.

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