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Anonymity in photography has become common to the extent that a signature is the exception to the rule. In reality, even if it is created automatically, any image needs the intervention of an operator, but, far from asserting a claim as the author, the operator tends to fade away into the crowd of photographers without names, not worthy of public recognition, simply foreign to the idea of making a name from the serial production of impersonal, ordinary snapshots, created mainly for pleasure.

But anonymous photography covers an infinite range of work from which masterpieces can emerge, obscure photos hidden by the sheer volume of images, just waiting to be discovered by chance.

The camera – once « given to the world » by Arago – spread its influence to all corners of society, much more rapidly than other technical innovations of the industrial age. Numerous amateurs were quick to acquire one, keen to try out the new invention. Cumbersome, awkward, and costly at first – so the privilege of a minority – once simplified, lighter and cheaper, the camera has become an ordinary object allowing anyone to become an anonymous picture maker. Through the simple action of pushing of a button, it gives an unprecedented access to infinity of optical exploration, without needing any specialist knowledge or training. The result is the prodigious success of photography, along with an equally prodigious disparagement of photography as an activity for the masses. A plethora of ordinary photos that are supposed to satisfy the desire for immediate consumption of a non-discerning public stands in opposition to the artistic and professional qualities of certain photographs, whose value is recognized in price or rarity by the market and institutional bodies.

Yet “amateur photography” covers a composite reality, extraordinarily diverse, ranging from the family snapshooter to the semi-professional, from the occasional to the devoted photo-club member, to the part-time reporter, the researcher looking to archive his work, the soldier in the trenches, the dreamer, the painter seeking to capture a fleeting visual intuition…. It covers a whole crowd of individuals, settled or travelling, pursuing multiple leisure activities, the modest local craftsman, the roving country photographer, the school or army photographer not thinking of signing his work; the creator of the post-card – that epistle of a prosperous society which has industrialized cheap picturesque images, and which constitutes an archive of rural and urban scenes…. Work on commission or individual initiatives, negatives lost by famous artists, or spirited away from their owners, and then there is the photo booth, for the photograph without photographer par excellence… These images, having become orphans of their authors or patrons, are dispersed throughout the world, stocked in archives, agency stores, corporate or official depots, libraries, organised in albums or scattered in the bottoms of cupboards, given away to vendors of old papers, if they haven’t just been left fall by the wayside…. An incredible mass, a huge body of work, which because of its radical anonymity, escapes all attempts at inventory, research, sorting or classification.

Anne-Marie Garat

A book collection Photo Poche, published by Actes Sud, accompanies the exhibition.