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In ‘The (Im)mobile Life of Digital Photographs: the Case of Tourist Photography”, Jonas Larsen examines how digital cameras and digital methods of dissemination have radically altered photo-tourism. One of the central changes affected by this technologically motivated increase in speed is the photographer’s connection to his or her photographs. Unlike the delayed gratification offered by the development … Continue reading
In “Virtually Me”, Smith and Watson build upon concepts from their book to provide a toolbox that attends to the way users create themselves online. The authors define the self as a marker of reflexivity, both online and offline. The self is constructed by the user, and represents the user – but it is not … Continue reading
In “Thinking photography beyond the visual?”, Elizabeth Edwards, a visual and historical anthropologist, draws attention to the multi-sensory and intersensory nature of photographic interactions in an effort to “extend our understanding of photography beyond the visual” (31); or to develop a theory of photography that reconciles orality and tactility with traditions of communication through images … Continue reading
Shove et al. in 2007 conducted a study with nine one-to-one interviews of amateur photographers, a local camera club, a focus group and workshop. Before diving into the analysis, they outlined three elements of photography: practitioners, participation and material. They also differentiated “early photography”, “popular photography”, “digital photography”, giving a brief history of “early photography … Continue reading
While trying to summarize Awkward Family Photos is not the easiest task, what I have come up with will hopefully allow some insight into why this website is so popular. Photographs posted on Awkward Family Photos tend to fall into three categories of what makes them awkward: a) The first category I will call “expired … Continue reading
Critics devoted to the study of family photography have privileged the materiality of this phenomenon. Approaches have largely examined the printed materials themselves, preferring a semiological close reading of noteworthy images (69). Rose notes an oversight in the scholarship on photography, and insists that family photographs cannot be defined simply by their visual content (74). … Continue reading
In “Digital cameras and domestic photography: communication, agency and structure” Cobley and Haeffner expand the debate on the nature of communication in digital domestic photography. Seeing the rise of digital as inevitable, and rather than accepting the status of a digital democracy as inherently utopian, they deem it a “potential”, “as part of quotidian attempts to … Continue reading
Catherine Zuromski accomplishes a surface reading of the snapshot photography genre, specifically in the domestic setting. She divides her collection of observations and interpretations into two distinct sub-categories: snapshot photography as image-object, and snapshot photography as a set of practices. The album keeper, or owner of the photographs has the agency to organize, embellish and … Continue reading
Barthes takes the Winter Garden photograph to depict his various thoughts on photography. He notes the element of time and history in photographs, and specifically Winter Garden was “the time when my mother was alive before me is—History” (65). As he recognizes fragments of her, he misses her being, her all together, the essence of … Continue reading
Attempting to establish – while acknowledging the paradox of – an eidetic science of (P)hotography, Barthes recounts an “ontological desire” that informs his critical framework (3, my emphasis). That is to say, Barthes introduces affect into structural modes of analysis. Camera Lucida reconciles historical, philosophical criticism with a subjective, experiential phenomenology. Barthes details the difficulty … Continue reading
Rhetoric of the Digital Image 