In contrast to the more repetitive commercial images, the amateur snapshots vary strikingly.

They were all amateur snapshots of groups of soldiers.

You are free to ignore this fact at no particular cost to the pleasure you receive, and also to ignore various links between these amateur snapshots and current art.

Surprisingly, the show has the opposite effect: the coolly cerebral space reinforces the distinction between the usual contrived "shock" art and these genuinely shocking amateur snapshots.

Mr. Boot said he began with 200 images of Mr. Hendrix, ranging from amateur snapshots of him as a teen-ager to prints from studio photo sessions originally done for his record albums.

Casual yet oddly concentrated, Mr. Hattan's little vignettes evoke the tradition of street photography and amateur snapshots, as well as Situationist Art's fabled "drift" through the urban environment.

Feldmann's approach to art-making is one of collecting, ordering and re-presenting amateur snapshots, print photographic reproductions, toys and trivial works of art.

But while Ms. Sherman has based her roles and images on commercial genres --most famously the film still - Ms. Lee favors the look of amateur snapshots.

It includes 328 modernist works by about 135 photographers along with 50 pictures from Mr. Walther's collection of amateur snapshots.

She also exhibits found photographs, such as the series Under a Steel Sky, in which her collection of amateur snapshots from the 1950s resembles Robert Frank's series, The Americans.