We're living in a vernacular world nowadays. It was ever thus, to some extent — in the world of art, especially photography, "vernacular" is used to refer to photographs taken by an untrained photographer who does not consider him or herself to be an artist. And so as long as cameras have been commercially available, people have taken pictures of themselves at birthday parties, or on vacation, or with celebrities.

You can always tell the vernacular ones. They don't know what the subject of their photograph is. They never learned the rule of threes, or how to use negative space. Thay take pictures from too far away, as though it is incomprehensible to take a photo of somebody without being able to see everything from the tops of their heads to their feet. A few nights ago, I saw two women asking a valet to take their picture downtown, by the Wondrous Azian Kitchen. But they posed so it was the sidewalk behind them, and not the neon facade of the restaurant, unconsciously selecting an anonymous and dull background over a more interesting one. That's vernacular in a nutshell, and millions of such photographs are taken per day, thanks to inexpensive digital cameras, some built into smart phones.

But the vernacular has spread well beyond photography. Thanks to YouTube, we have millions of hours of vernacular video; MySpace produced an especially appalling type of vernacular web design; blogs gave rise to vernacular writing, returning the word to its origins, when it described the specific language of a place. Heck, the web has even created its own vernacular, and every time somebody emails you with LOL or ROFL or W00T, they're speaking it.

I myself have caught vernacular fever, thanks, in part, to the camera built into my iPad. I spend so much of my time going to interesting art events and talking to interesting people, and I take photographs of all of it, that I've just gotten sick of interestingness. So I have started taking photographs of things I consider to be boring, which I then upload to Facebook, the world's gallery of boring photography. I took a picture of some carpet yesterday. I take pictures of surveillance cameras, because they irritate me. I take pictures of people I don't know, and I always try to make sure they're poorly framed. However, I never let people pose for a photograph. I hate posed photographs, even though it's the standard in vernacular photos. It may be why I like taking pictures of dogs — they are incapable of posing, and sometimes panic when they realize they're getting their photo taken and get skittish. My pictures of dogs are usually images of places where dogs used to be.

I was thrilled to discover there is a small showing at IFP Minnesota, called "A View of the Vernacular." It's the work of two photographers, Lex Thompson and Eric Ruby, and, in both cases, they are far more skilled than your average photographer. So while the photographs on display are quite well taken, it's the subject matter that is vernacular. Ruby, in particular, shares my disdain of interestingness. He has a photo in which the subject is two cuts of meat, and another that is a nondescript photograph of a rural home in Willmar, Minn. His work is gloriously bland — there's an unexpected excitement in realizing that somebody has chosen as their subject something you usually look away from. He has a photo of a sink with some cleaning supplies atop, and above it is a window with some slat blinds partially covering them, and the blinds have been pulled up badly, so that one side is higher than the other. And that detail makes the picture worthwhile. It's so irritating! Fix your blinds!

Sometimes interestingness creeps into Ruby's pictures. He has one of a boy on a tricycle that is much to small for him — the boy seems to be in his teens, and the trike seems made for a child. The boys isn't going anywhere on the bike, but just sitting on it in an awkward pose, staring off into the distance with a vague look of discontent. The photo raises a lot of questions, but they're pretty dull questions, which is frequently the sort of questions vernacular photos raise: Who is this kid? Why is he on a trike? Why doesn't he go home and fix his blinds?

Lex Thompson, in the meanwhile, can't seem to help but find interesting subjects — although, in fairness, he does have two photos of piles of snow on the side of a parking lot that is perfectly, marvelously boring. In fact, right now, when the snow has just gotten around to melting, it's positively an affront. I don't want to see piles of snow right now — do you?

But most of his photographs are of unexpected subjects, and are carefully composed so that calling them "vernacular" is stretching the definition. He does seem to favor shots taken from the middle distance, and it can be hard to know precisely what the subject of his photos are, so I'm going to give him some leeway. But Thompson has a pair of photos taken in the woods, which is satisfyingly dull, until you look more closely and discover there are huge statues of dinosaurs fighting in these woods. Another photo shows a room in a house that is positively festooned with stuffed animals, in the center of which sits a real live cat, staring at the camera with a sort of combative look. These are great photographs, mind you, but when you've gotten yourself in the mood for vernacular images, they're too exciting. For Pete's sake, Thompson, you've included an image of a statue of a polar bear chained to a tree! Are you trying to give somebody a heart attack?!

I suspect the subject of vernacular art is going to be one of increasing importance, especially in popular arts. Look at television now — so many of the shows use what they call a "single-camera" setup, in which the shots are handheld, and jump about, and contain lens flares and wander away from the subject of the shot. I call this technique YouTube vérité, and honestly think it is television attempting to duplicate the vernacular videos of the web.

This is how it happens. It used to be that popular arts stole from the underground, because unpopular artists were seen as more authentic than popular ones. So techniques of independent filmmaking, as an example, worked their way into mainstream filmmaking. The content of pulp fiction, or Off-Off-Broadway theater, or independent music, were all ransacked to offer a sort of ersatz legitimacy to mainstream art. But we're all unpopular artists now, flooding the world with our photographs, and our Livespace blogs, and our YouTube videos, and, eventually, the songs we make on programs like GarageBand. Every one of us is a vernacular artist, and we are, without intending to, creating the language of the future of art. The past half century has been increasingly defined by collage — new art became obsessed with combining and remixing art that preceded it. Mark my words, the next half century will be defined by vernacular.

All right, I've written enough. I think I'll head outside and take a photo of the old car outside my window. It's about the ugliest thing I have ever seen.