Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.100

The rise of snapshot photography coincided with increased recreation time and car ownership for the middle-class worker. Americans traversed space and snapped photos with a sense of speed and freedom unthinkable before the modern industrial age. Theorist Susan Sontag argues that the camera provides travelers with a degree of control over unfamiliar environments. Photographing sites becomes an act of possession, played out quite literally in the propensity for tourists to climb on, imitate, or pose alongside sculptures and monuments. Statues of human figures have proven to be particularly attractive sites to snapshooters exploring the contrast (or cohesion) of flesh and stone.