With just 12 days left in this round of the competition, I'm feeling all nostalgic for the great work we've seen* (and continue to see!) come in. I've also been wondering how we can continue, in these last days, to showcase the breadth of submissions we receive. I've seen a lot of amazing photographs this year that are visually lush and conceptually irresistible, but today I want to celebrate the snapshot.

Kissing & Exercise, 2008 by Bruce Cunningham

"Every time I'm really down on this city, I find someone singing beautifully in the subway," tweeted my coworker Sara yesterday. Her words came to mind when I saw these photos by contender Bruce Cunningham because living in New York, I too find myself in serendipitous (and often strangely beautiful or hilarious) situations on a day-to-day basis. Bruce's photographs, like Kissing & Exercise (above), show that he does too.

Bruce writes, "I consider myself an urban prospector panning for gold." His images are neither lush nor conceptual, but like a singer in the subway when I'm feeling down, they make me smile. I'm reminded of Jason Polan, an artist who has set out to draw Every Person in New York, and comes across these nuggets of gold left and right.

Dad and son in the sculpture garden at The Museum of Modern Art, August 7, 2010 by Jason Polan

But what makes certain snapshots golden? I recently read a short essay titled After the Amateur by Ed Halter, in which he explicates the history of the snapshot and suggests that a camera doesn't just capture these moments, it creates them:

In "Diana and Nikon," [Janet] Malcolm finds it necessary to use another classification, distinct from "amateur," to describe a new trend in art photography of the 1970s. Now, she writes, a generation of photographers takes as its "starting point, model, and guide...the most inartistic (and presumably most purely photographic) form of all--the home snapshot."

The attributes previously sought by photographers--strong design, orderly composition, control over tonal values, lucidity of content, good print quality--have been stood on their heads, and the qualities now courted are formlessness, rawness, clutter, accident, and other manifestations of the camera's formidable capacity for imposing disorder on reality--for transforming, say, a serene gathering of nice-looking people in pleasant surroundings (as one had perceived it) into a chaotic mess of lamp cords, rumpled Kleenexes, ugly food, ill-fitting clothes, grotesque gestures, and vapid expressions.

Bench Sitters, 2009 by Bruce Cunningham

What I love about Malcom's explanation of a camera condensing three-dimensional space into two-dimensional chaos is that it lends credibility and intention to images which might otherwise be dismissed as amateur. I often find myself in an endless meta-cognizant loop: is this or is this not a good photo? But the magic of these photos isn't in the perfect tones, it's in the "disorder imposed on reality". What Bruce and Jason and Sara and I are all sharing is a particular kind of awareness.

Snapshots are beautiful to me because they flatten and package morsels of beauty, humor and hope for later. I'm tempted to look at Bruce's pictures and say "only in New York," but a camera can capture (or create) these golden moments for us to take everywhere.

* In fact, we've already seen images we love so much that we want to edition them. Yes, that is a hint! Get on the 20x200 newsletter today to see which contender we will be releasing an edition from on 20x200 tomorrow.