This paper is about art history’s worst nightmare—boring pictures. This is the only possible description of the vast majority of photographic images, which tend to be predictable, conservative and repetitive in both form and content. As a consequence, they do not easily fit into an art historical narrative still anxiously, insecurely, focused on originality, innovation, and individualism. The study of photography thus represents a serious problem for the practice of art history, just as, say, the snapshot, represents a serious problem for the history of photography. How should one go about writing a history for an infinity of generic snapshots? What historical rationale should one adopt when value judgments no longer seem to be relevant elements of the historical process? Hal Foster has worried aloud about the “ethnographic turn” he says is involved in the displacement of art history by visual culture, a concern that seems to focus on the relativism he associates with an anthropological model of historical practice. Through an examination of the problem of writing a history for the snapshot photograph, my paper will address the othering of art history that the ‘ethnographic turn’ apparently entails by proposing yet another kind of historical model.