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"Why snapshots?" 
John Nichols, curator of the museum, has been collecting photographs for over 25 years. Snapshots have been a part of his life since he was a baby but it is only within the past 5 years that he has seriously been gathering up and studying snapshots.
In 1998 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened an exhibit titled "Snapshots: The Photography of Everyday Life". John Nichols lent 9 snapshots to the exhibit. That exhibit explored amateur, domestic photography in a museum context examining the borderline between what museums display and what visitors might themselves create with a camera. This exhibit demonstrated the potential for untutored, unintentional "masterpieces" that are only possible with photography.
When the SFMOMA exhibit closed it seemed a shame that there could not be a permanent exhibit dedicated to the snapshot. At that point John Nichols decided to open the Santa Paula Snapshot Museum in a corner of the John Nichols Gallery. It is billed as "The only museum in the world dedicated exclusively to the art of the anonymous snapshot." If anyone knows of another snapshot museum in the world please tell us about it.
Press releases were sent out in October of 1998 for the initial exhibit titled "Selections from the Permanent Collection". The press responded enthusiastically. Josef Woodard reviewed the exhibit for the Ventura County section of the Los Angeles Times in an almost full page review with a photograph of the museum. Woodard wrote that "Once the viewer conquers built-in biases about looking at candid amateur photography as art, snapshots can contain delights and startling, unexpected truths about human experience. That very lack of guile or artistic intention allows for a window on souls through which we'd never otherwise see."
A photo of the curator, John Nichols, appeared on the cover of the Ventura County Star's Time Out section. The feature article by Kim Lamb Gregory noted that "many of the works were rescued on their way to the Dumpster. In fact, visitors to the museum are invited to take a souvenir snapshot with them from a basket of leftovers." Kim returned later to write up a column on one of the albums that she had seen at the museum. It was a touching piece of writing about the life of an 18 year old young man who drowned. His entire life seemed to be contained within the black pages of a snapshot album.
Wendy Miller of the Los Angeles Times visited the museum to show the curator a snapshot of her dog, Kirby. This photo of her dog was analyzed and assessed as part of the story. Nichols is quoted as saying, "Photos aren't reality, though many people think they are or that they capture reality. They are a reality tunnel - the perception is tiny. Commercial photographs tell a different story than snaps. It is an interesting concept in art to be looking at snapshots as a tunnel to reality. And while we are not at the stage where we have come up with any answers, we are at the stage where we are asking some interesting questions."
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