Flipping through an old photo album, I came across a picture of myself as a little girl posing in front of my television set. Standing in my red, white, and blue party dress, attempting to curtsy, I was the subject of a snapshot that curiously depicted TV not as a mass-entertainment medium, but as a backdrop for a social performance in an intimate family scene. Struck by the snapshot, I wondered if there were others like it. Searching at thrift stores and online sites, I’ve collected roughly 5,000 snapshots of people posing with TV sets in the 1950s through the 1970s. The snapshots depict a broad range of families across racial, class, and ethnic backgrounds. Like today’s selfies, TV snapshots were a popular photographic practice through which people pictured themselves in an increasingly mediatized culture.
Rather than watch TV, in TV snapshots, people use TV as a prop and backdrop for the presentation of self and family. Snapshots turn the home into a theater of everyday life where people use TV to showcase themselves as celebrities of their own making. In snapshots, the empty space around the television set essentially becomes a posing place in which people play roles and engage in acts of everyday pretend.
Kodak manuals and how-to books had traditionally recommended families pose in front of fireplaces, the one-time center of the family home. In snapshots, the television set often usurps the role of the fireplace and takes on the ritual functions previously performed at the hearth. Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Mothers’ Day, New Year’s Eve are all occasions for poses in front of or next to the TV. Ritual moments of the life cycle are celebrated in the TV setting. Posers blow out birthday candles or appear in ceremonial costumes like graduation regalia and wedding dresses. Like shop windows, TV sets are dressed for holiday celebrations with greeting cards, pumpkins, little Christmas trees, easter baskets, wedding cakes placed on top.