Now Is Then:
Snapshots from the Maresca Collection
Marvin Heiferman

Deceptive in the ease of their creation, diminutive size, and sheer abundance, snapshots are often thought of as the most innocent type of photography. But snapshots are complex and willful pictures—premeditated, fussed over, and often predetermined. The postures we adopt, the gestures we pantomime, the exaggerated facial expressions we compose and try to hold for a split second are all meant to express the emotional weight of a certain moment. In a time when digital cameras make photography all too easy, it is fascinating to look back on a day when image making was more deliberate.

Now Is Then features images from the 1920s through the 1960s, the golden age of snapshot photography. The photos—quirky, elegant, heartbreaking, and heart-warming—both celebrate and question the conventions of snapshot photography. Texts by well-known visual culture critics offer fresh perspectives on the snapshots and their power over us. Unlike previous explorations of vernacular photography, Now Is Then takes a step forward to look at the broader cultural impact of snapshots—why we make them, how we use them, why they become relics, and, most importantly, what they reveal about us.


Marvin Heiferman--a curator, writer, and editor with a particular interest in photographic and visual culture--develops exhibitions, packages books, and strategizes programming for cultural institutions. He is the creative consultant to The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, developing The Smithsonian Photographic Initiative. He has authored many books, including John Waters' Change of Life, Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution, and Talking Pictures: People Speak About the Photographs that Speak to Them. He is part of the Core Graduate Faculty at the ICP-Bard College Program in Advanced Photographic Studies, New York and adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts, New York.

Nancy M. West is Associate Chair, English Department, University of Missouri-Columbia. She is the author of Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia.

Geoffrey Batchen is a writer, curator, and lecturer, and the author of Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004), Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography, and Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History. He is Professor of the History of Photography at CUNY Graduate Center in New York.
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Editorial Reviews

New York Times:
"The images evoke a surprisingly wide range of emotions--poignant and silly, curious and ordinary, playful and sad." (3/14/2008)

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