Seattle Everyman lands a National Gallery of Art show of everyday snapshots

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Perhaps it was the shot of the bikini-clad blonde with the beehive hairdo, a classic pose from the 1960s, but with a shadow lurking in its corner.

Or the two women posing gaily on a bench — wearing gas masks.

Seattle's Robert E. Jackson doesn't remember anymore which photo started him on the road to D.C.

But over a decade, the businessman accumulated nearly 9,000 pictures. He scavenged yard sales on Queen Anne, and began buying old silver gelatin pictures from antiques shops at Pioneer Square, the detritus of generations abandoned to estate sales.

The photographers were average Americans trying out their cameras and trying their hand at art.

Now, more than 200 of them are the subject of a major new exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The first snapshot show at the Gallery, it is titled "The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978: From the Collection of Robert E. Jackson."

"It has been my dream to have a show," said Jackson in an interview. "And you have to dream big."

Robert who?

If you have not heard of Jackson, you are not alone.

He is not the type of multimillionaire who decides to collect the works of masters and get some tax breaks.

Exceedingly reticent, Jackson works for a financial company in Seattle, which he won't identify; he used to be at Washington Mutual.

"I'm not a hot shot, I'm not rich," Jackson said laughing. "I work in a cubicle."

He lives in an apartment in the Capitol Hill area.

Jackson, 53, came from Texas 11 years ago for career reasons. He loved art, and earned an M.A. in art history at the University of North Carolina. His thesis was on the influence of the French painters on America's Winslow Homer.

But there are few ways to pay bills with a background in art history. "I got an MBA so I could earn a living," said Jackson. His MBA project was on formulating and managing a corporate art collection.

He swears he is not responsible for the large acrylic canvases of black stripes on white backgrounds that today dominate company boardrooms coast to coast.

The road to the National

The National Gallery show is the product of five years of planning, prodding and persistence by Jackson. The starting date of the title — 1888 — coincides with the birth of the Kodak camera.

"When I decided I wanted to get a show, I decided to aim for the major galleries," he said. He set his sights on the National.

After many e-mails, the National's photography curator, Sarah Greenough, agreed to meet Jackson in Manhattan in 2003. He brought a folder of photocopies of some of his best.

Greenough was hooked. She flew to Seattle, and went through the piles of pictures in his home.

But the reaction from the Gallery's scholars and curators was somewhat skeptical.

"You're going to do what?" they said, scoffing about a show of anonymous snapshots. They told her, "You've got to be kidding."

She prevailed, and at the recent preview, Greenough told reporters, "The National Gallery is not in the habit of celebrating bad works of art."

On Oct. 7, The Washington Post's review was given two center pages.

"The more you see its snapshots, the more you make your peace with the elusive, compound ghost who brought us these pictures," wrote art critic Paul Richard.

He added, "It isn't just one being, it's everyone who's ever stopped to snap a picture, and all the lessons taught by the movies and Life magazine."

Small but potent

The pictures are small — not the glossy blowups of celebrity photographers.

What is interesting, Jackson noted, is that rank amateurs — your mom and dad and their parents — suddenly felt creative. And they were.

Angles are deliberately askew in many. Someone snapped a man leaping over a crevice in the Grand Canyon — from below. Two women from the late 1800s sit at their vanity, their reflection caught in two mirrors at once.

In several, photographers experimented with exposure techniques to produce ghostlike effects. A picture from 1900 shows a couple at the piano. The man stares at the camera. The woman, in a white gown, playing the piano, is eerily transparent.

And then there's the family shot from 1910: a black-and-white snap of a languid dog, a restless cat and a hopeful child, posing together, one parent's vision of contentment.

The show closes Dec. 31, but the images will last with you much longer.

Alicia Mundy: 202-662-7457 or amundy@seattletimes.com