VERNACULAR

 

Vernacular photography, when taken into consideration as a form which can counteract the main stream, can corrupt hierarchies. As a more lateral testimony of history where the stories being told are of ordinary unknown people, forming quiet, domestic spaces of the everyday. This image-making process that forms unity and identity for a group of people as vernacular language does, opposes the imposed standards to tell the tale in their own words. They serve as identifying factors to enable identification within the group and exclude the other.

 

The choice of family and personal photographs could  be seen as yet another narcissistic endeavour which is in line with the image sharing identities of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as they stop opposing a system and tend to reinforce them, as is discussed in the online article by Sarah Kember, The Becoming-Photographer in Technoculture at eitherand.org.

 

Through misplacement or de-contextualisation, the photograph can be traced back although it remains non-specific, decodable but non-personal.