1 snapping, sharing… being digital online photography
TRANSCRIPT
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SNAPPING, SHARING… BEING
Digital Online Photography and Identity Construction
Ana Paula Mireles Andrade
Research M.A. Artistic Research
University of Amsterdam
Master Thesis
June 2015
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………………………...p.3
CHAPTER 1…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..p.9 I AM… here, there, everywhere. Identity construction within the offline and online realms
CHAPTER 2………………………………………………………………………………………………………...p.17 CULTURE VS. NATURE The role of photography in the construction of identity
CHAPTER 3………………………………………………………………………………………………………...p.26 CROSS OVER Online digital photography as a mediator between online and offline identities
CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………………………………………………p.33
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………….p.40
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INTRODUCTION
Since the introduction of mobile phones in the late 1980’s these devices have become
“the most quickly adopted consumer technology in the history of the world”1 and in
2014 the number of registered active cell phones surpassed the number of people in
the world when reaching 7.3 billion devices2. Technology has evolved and now, with a
cellphone, we can always be connected with the world. This, together with other
technologies and practices, has speed up the generation and distribution of
information as soon as is published by the user. This new paradigm is called ‘real time
web’. Which, in contrast with the traditional web, works with pieces of information
instead of whole units. As a result it offers better flow in communication, consents to
build on top of each other, and grants the user the possibility of setting their personal
preferences. Furthermore, it allows the reception of information as soon as is
uploaded by the user, which allows the immediate dissemination. All of these
advantages have resulted in an exponential growth of social usage3.
One of the most commonly used features of mobile phones within real time
web is to make pictures and share them on social networks. Today, to mention a
couple of examples from the many different platforms used for this activity, 27,800
images are uploaded to Instagram every minute, and on Facebook this number goes as
high as 208,3004.
This idea of carrying around a camera phone in our pocket and have the
possibility to snap at the tip of our fingers without any limits forgetting the 12, 24 or
36 film format has generated an exponential growth in the production of images that
1 Rainie, Lee, “Cell phone ownership hits 91% of adults, Pew Research Center, June 6th 2013, Web. < http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-‐tank/2013/06/06/cell-‐phone-‐ownership-‐hits-‐91-‐of-‐adults/>, January 6th 2015. 2 Pramis, Joshua, Number of Mobile Phones to Exceed World Population by 2014, Digital Trends, February 28th 2013, Web. < http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/mobile-‐phone-‐world-‐population-‐2014/> January 6th 2015. 3 Cfr, Sainz, Rosa María, ed. “Qué es Real time web?”, Real time web: una nueva conciencia global, Telefónica, España, 2011. 4 Bañuelos Jacob & Francisco Mata, ed. Fotografía y dispositivos móviles. Escenarios de un nuevo paradigma visual, Tecnológico de Monterrey, México, 2014, pp.47, 97.
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have overloaded the Internet. Making pictures has become one of the most repeated
practices in our everyday life.
This new paradigm has provoked many changes in the way we use and
approach photography:
-‐It changed the filters of what is worth capturing: we don’t have to think twice
before snapping a photo since we have no limits in quantity. A photograph no longer
means a material investment, and it can be easily discarded if we decide that we have
no use for it.
-‐It has also altered the way we conceive our private moments. In the past we
kept the photographs of our personal life to ourselves, or we shared them with our
close ones after they had been printed and organized in albums. Nowadays we
photograph our personal moments to make them public and share them on the spot
with hundreds of people hoping to get some reaction from the others whether it is a
like, a comment, a meme, or another image. The private has become public.
-‐Finally, all of these practices have changed the way we understand and
perceive photography. We used to think of it as something that would help us
preserve a specific event or person, to remember special moments, to look back into
our lives and think this is what I have done, this is where I have been, this is what has
made me who I am. Whilst now we use photography to share the present with others,
thinking how many responses it will get, how the other will see us, we do it not to look
back on them but to look at our present and construct a future, we are thinking this is
what I am doing, this is where I am, this is who I am becoming every moment that
passes.
Thanks to mobile phone photography new genres have arisen within the
medium like the ‘selfie’ or ‘food porn’; and for it new hardware has been developed
like the selfie stick, hat and drone; or Dinnercam, a light-‐box specially designed to
place your smartphone in it and get a perfectly lit dish for you to share as food porn.
New software has been developed as well for immediate post-‐production and easy
sharing of mobile images. Since smartphones became the number one device to take
pictures and Nokia was selling more photographic devices than Kodak, the digital
cameras had to evolve in order to keep up with the new uses of photography and thus
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many of them incorporated a share button into them. Trough these developments we
have changed our approach to photography shifting its use from being a memory tool
into something that gives sense to our existence, it no longer provides an insight to
our past, but to our future. So it is safe to say that it has changed photography, but has
it changed us5? Has it changed the way we see and represent ourselves? And if so, how
and to what extent?
Within the real time web we have many different platforms that allow us to
shape our online identities. Blog sites like Blogger or Wordpress provide the
opportunity to share information uploaded by the user free of charge and without any
coding knowledge. This has attracted many people to express their opinions and
thoughts in the public arena. They are mostly based on text, but can also host videos
and images. Other sites are more specific about the media, for example for video
sharing there is the most popular YouTube, but also others like Vimeo or Revver. And
of course there are platforms specifically designed for photo sharing. The first one of
these was PhotoBucket (2003) but this idea has come a long way being one of the
most targeted by developers to fit the different needs of the user.
Google has two different platforms when it comes to images: Panoramio which
is exclusively geolocated to work with Google Maps; and Picasa which allows the
creation of photo albums that can be shared with other users via email or by being
linked with social networks. Apple created specifically for IPhone the image social
network Instagram, which thanks to its growing popularity is now available for other
systems like Android. It is based on the idea of sharing your images in social networks,
allowing the user to post-‐produce the photo with a variety of filters with just one
touch. And finally, the most famous site is Flickr because it not only provides the
amateur user with all the social advantages of the others, but also offers copyright
protection, which has attracted also professional photographers to its use.
The key aspect for the popularity of all this platforms is the social interaction
through social networks. We use all these pictures to showcase ourselves by creating 5 By us I am referring to social network’s users; I wanted to make this clarification because the social and cultural changes occurred thanks to new technologies have impacted even the people that have no smartphones, or no access to internet or that for whatever reason decide not to use it even if they have it available, but the impact on them is different and would require another research.
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profiles on Facebook, Tinder, LinkedIn, Twitter and so on. But given all these
possibilities, why do we keep coming back to the commonplaces in photography?
Beyond the fact that all tourists might capture a landmark in the same way or any
other commonplace that you can think of, it is also noticeable that regardless of the
frequency of the posts, each profile has certain patterns that get repeated. For
example, there are people who mainly post food porn, or party pictures, or selfies, etc.
and some of the patterns are very similar to those of other users. It seems that what
we are trying to do in these profiles then is to construct an image-‐based identity. But
is it the same one that we try to construct offline?
Theorist and photographer Joan Fontcuberta writes in his book La cámara de
Pandora: “Windows system has become a powerful metaphor to conceive our identity
as a system that is multiple and disseminated… a decentralized self that needs to exist
in many worlds at a time, playing different roles. Life may be just another ‘window’…
Today, the electronic screen allows us to cross-‐dress our identity at will"6. But, is it
merely a cross-‐dressing? Is it just something external to us that we change as casually
as we change clothes? Frequently when I discuss with people the topic of my research
the first response is: “Oh, so you mean how we are all fake on the Internet?” It seems
to be a general idea that whatever we do online can be just a pretension and is
completely external to us, but what I aim to explore in the context of this thesis is
whether or not we may be interiorizing our online profiles and as a result, modifying
our offline identity as well. If this is the case, I would like to question what the role of
photography is in this process.
In order to answer this question I will start by defining what identity is.
Whenever we speak of identity in everyday life we understand what we are talking
about with a certain degree of accuracy, but it actually is a very complex process that
needs to be addressed in order to proceed with the research. I will dedicate the first
chapter of this thesis to understand what identity is both offline and online, and how
do we construct it.
6 Fontcuberta, Joan, La cámara de Pandora. La fotografí@ después de la fotografía, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2010, p.101. My translation.
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Who we are is one of the oldest questions human beings have asked, one might
even say that it is the ability to ask this question what essentially makes us human;
therefore a great number of authors from many different disciplines have studied it.
Whilst I will be looking at different theories, the main source that I will use for this
thesis is the one by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Two of his theories
seemed particularly relevant for this research: first, he considers that the image plays
a fundamental role in the construction of the Ego. Second, throughout his writings he
explored the relationship we have with the gaze, and the implications it has in
constructing our identities.
By using these concepts I am not attempting to provide an answer to this
ancestral question of who we are, instead, the aim is to clarify how I understand the
concept in order to move forward in the research. After having established the factors
that constitute identity, I will be able to insert a concept of identity within the online
and offline context and see how every factor comes into play in each one; and with it
individualizing the characteristics of identity in both worlds, what the differences and
similarities are and thereby determine how do they relate.
Once I have clarified this, I will explore on the second chapter what the relation
is between these identities and photography. To do so I will make use of two theorists:
on one hand there is the photographer and academic Joan Fontcuberta who argues
that the social and cultural uses of photography are intimately related with the
technical aspect of it. Following the theory that Marshall McLuhan wrote in The
medium is the massage (1967) about the nature of the media, I will explore the
ontological issue of what photography is. On the other hand, there is the media
theorist Jose van Dijck who claims that the inherent qualities of photography continue
to be the same regardless of the technical differences and the changes in use are the
result of a complex socio-‐cultural restructuration. I will confront their respective
points of view and make a comparative analysis between the analogue, the digital and
the Internet eras in order to understand if that relationship has changed throughout
this development both in the nature of the media and its repercussions in society.
Finally, a third chapter will be dedicated specifically to online photography and
how its practice could be the link between our offline and online identities; whether it
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works as a mediator or as a divider. I will support this chapter with the theories that
Hito Steyerl has developed in several essays. Steyerl analyses the global circulation of
images in both her artistic work and her theoretical research. I will pay special
attention to her concept of ‘circulasionism’ developed in the essay Too much world: Is
the Internet Dead7. To complement Steyerl’s ideas I will also take into consideration
‘the new aesthetic’ from James Bridle presented at the conference Waving at the
Machines at Web Directions South 2011. With these two authors as core of the chapter
I will study the passage from the virtual to the real world. I will argue that the
common practice of making and sharing photographs in social networks is the way in
which we cross over the screen and link both the offline and online identity.
In sum, this research has aims at understanding further the implications of an
act that we are doing more and more with each passing day. It is commonly conceived
as something so banal and superficial due to its ephemeral nature and the
commonplaces usually interpreted as passivity and lack of creativity that we repeat
this act without thinking what the consequences could be. This is why I believe it to be
so important to study it, because it is a phenomenon that whether we like it or not, it
is happening and it will not be ending soon.
7 Originally published in e-‐flux journal, no. 49, 2013.
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CHAPTER 1
I AM… here, there, everywhere.
Identity construction within the offline and online realms
In 2012, Tobias Leingruber, an artist from F.A.T Lab created an unofficial Facebook ID
card. The project is called Social ID Bureau and consisted in a performance in Berlin
where he handed out over 150 Social Networks ID Cards. Each one included your real
name, username, sex, location, the date you joined the social network, and a QR code
that will send people straight to your profile.
Leingruber clarified in his artist statement that from all the social networks
that we use, he chose Facebook because it has taken a predominant role into
conforming our identities online. For example, many apps in order to install and
function ask for a verification of your identity by linking themselves to your Facebook
account. One of the most important premises for the artist was to question the issue of
privacy, who controls your identity? What would happen if your Facebook profile
became more important than government identification? “For the good or bad we are
losing anonymity and Facebook Inc. is establishing order in this "world wild web"”8 he
continues. But the privacy issue exceeds the scope of this research; instead I would
like to focus on the crossing of borders between the offline and online identities.
While Facebook is the leader in conforming and verifying our online identities
to the extent of being a condition in order to use other apps -‐ as Leingruber says -‐ it is
slowly crossing over to the offline world too. Some companies are using online
profiles to offer personalized services. One example is the website Hotelied that
advertises itself as: “Hotelied unlocks personalized unpublished rates at luxury hotels.
Finally a hotel booking site where it pays to be you”. So it is a service completely based
on your online identity, that links to your social network in order to get your
information and with it find you the best deals in hotel booking. Of course we know
that the advertisement we get while surfing the net are not random but target specific
according to our browsing history, but this concept goes a step further towards 8 Leingruber, Tobias, “Social ID Bureau”, Update May 2012, Web. < http://www.socialidbureau.com/>, December 28th 2014.
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Leingruber’s hypothetical world; it is not just offering you something you might like, is
about offering you a personalized deal because they are assuming that who you are
online is also who you are offline.
When Internet first reached the common user it was much more anonymous,
which represented a risk for some people but was a creative and liberating feature for
others. I still remember when people started making friends or dates online and how
the main concern was that you could be talking to someone completely different than
who they claim to be. Because behind the screen you could be an old fat man chatting
as a teenage hot girl. And although the idea of pretending to be someone you are not
by creating fake profiles on social networks is still around and is commonly called
‘catfishing’ (making reference to the 2010 documentary film Catfish that later became
a TV program made by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman), it is no longer the norm.
Little by little this anonymity has disappeared and it has definitely hit the most
drastic change so far since the creation of big conglomerates like Google or Facebook.
These companies are pushing the user into “forming a single public identity that's an
aggregated version of their offline past, the online present and their combined
future”9 explains Aleks Krotosky in his analysis of online identity for The Guardian.
But while it has become the main tendency, it is also worth mentioning that there are
many other sites that are fighting against it by building networks based on anonymity
like 4Chan or the Tor Project. Is it thus realistic to argue that offline and online
identities are completely detached from each other? Is there communication between
them? Or are them the same thing? In order to try an answer these questions, it is
important to establish what identity is and how we build it.
A small clarification is in order. I will avoid the terms real (for the offline) and
virtual (for the online) as they are colloquially used for two reasons: first because they
are terms that have different connotations within different contexts and disciplines
that enclose a broader spectrum than the one this research aims at; second and more
important, because as I will argue, what happens online is as real as what happens
9 Krotosky, Aleks, “Online identity: is authenticity or anonymity more important?”, The Guardian, April 19th 2012, Web. < http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/19/online-‐identity-‐authenticity-‐anonymity>, December 23rd 2014.
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offline. Having said this, lets just add that online will be the term I’ll use to refer to the
activity that happens when we are connected to the Internet; and offline on the other
side will refer to what happens outside the Internet.
To begin with definitions and etymology, I turn first to the Oxford Dictionary.
The origin of the word identity comes from the Latin idem, later identitas that means
‘same’; and the current definition is “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is;
the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is; an object serving to
establish who the holder, owner, or wearer is by bearing their name and often other
details such as a signature or photograph”10. So, far from its origin it now means
something unique. But, a second definition within the same dictionary proposes: “a
close similarity or affinity”11, in which case goes back to the Latin origin of ‘same’.
We can see that there is a tension within the definitions, on the one side is
about a certain innate quality that defines who we are, that unique and specific person
can only be me and nobody else. But on the other hand is about the sameness, the
similarity, but to what? And how can I be unique and the same as something/someone
else simultaneously? The answer lies in our social nature. Who we are goes beyond
our individuality, part of it is also linked to a group/nation/team to which we belong
instead of other; we become individuals within a society.
According to Jacques Lacan –as I will present in more detail-‐ since a very early
age when the Ego is being formed we recognize ourselves in an external figure, in the
other. And we struggle our entire lives trying to figure out who we are within our
cultural and social groups. In his analysis of Jacques Lacan’s work Steven Z. Levine
states: “…our questions are addressed (…) to the generalized Other of the cultural
order into which we are born, in which we are educated, which we are willingly or
unwillingly join, and in the various idioms of which we must try to formulate answers
to our nagging questions”12 like who am I? We cannot answer this by ourselves but
also in relation to our surroundings.
10 Oxford University Press 2010, Oxford Dictionary of English, 2012, Mobile application software. < https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oxford-‐dictionary-‐english/id665056146?mt=8>, December 23rd 2014. 11 Oxford Dictionary of English 12 Levine, Steven, Lacan Reframed, I.B. Tauris, NY, 2008, p.xiv.
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After analyzing the theories of George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, Sigmund
Freud and Louis Althusser, Kath Woodward argues, that identity is formed by the
interrelation between ‘agency’ which is the control that we have over who we are,
(this would be the individual part) and ‘structures’ that are the external forces that
shape us (this would correspond to the society in which we are becoming
individuals)13 . To summarize her research very briefly: individuals are free to
conceive themselves and understand their world and experiences, but they will
always be influenced and limited by their material body, the language and symbols
they use to express themselves, the society and culture in which they move and the
economical possibilities that they have.
As we can see, authors from many disciplines agree that our identity is formed
both from inside and from the outside. I would like to use Jacques Lacan to explain
how we incorporate this process in our personal development. The reason I am using
his theories is because I believe he is key to addressing our current subject by
assigning a very important role to images in the construction of identity. Lacan
divided the constitution of the human experience in three levels: the Real, the
Symbolic and the Imaginary. The Real is the ungraspable ground in which the
Symbolic and the Imaginary stand; the Imaginary would be the one that holds the
images from our visual recognition called signifiers; and the meaning of these images
are the signifieds which belong to the Symbolic14.
Since my own research is based on identity construction through photography
I concentrate in the Imaginary. The Imaginary concerns the visual images, either
perceived or imagined. Although Lacan’s theories evolved and developed throughout
his career, the fundamentals of the Imaginary were presented in The Mirror Stage as
Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience15 (1949) because
the core of the Imaginary is the formation of the Ego in this stage. The Ego is not
something we are born with, but it is something that we struggle to construct
13 Cfr. Woodward, Kath, ed. “Questions of Identity”, Questioning identity: gender, class, nation, Routledge, London, 2000. 14 Cfr. Levine, Lacan Reframed, pp. xv-‐xvii. 15 Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits, W.W. Norton Company, NY, 2006, pp. 75-‐81.
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throughout our entire lives because the Imaginary is always in contrast with the
Symbolic: “…on the one hand, there was the ideal Ego of the Imaginary other that the
emerging Ego aspires to be like; and, on the other hand, there was the Ego-‐ideal, the
position of Symbolic speech from which the aspiring Ego wished to be judged as
wholly exemplifying its ideal. At its core the Ego was split, alienated from itself as an
alter Ego, constructed on the basis of a visual model found outside itself”16.
This visual model is the image of a person that sees herself in the mirror
between the age of six and eighteen months. In other words, the Ego is born within a
visual scenario and it happens when the self is encountered outside of us in a mirror
image external to the individual. With this theory, we can see the bifurcation of our
self-‐image that is conformed by our internal recognition based in the reflection of
something external. “The infant’s mastery is in the mirror stage, outside himself, while
he is not really master of his movements. He only sees his form as more or less total
and unified in an external image, in a virtual, alienated, ideal unity that cannot actually
be touched”17. This is one of the theories that can explain why the question of who we
are always includes our perception of us reflected in the other. Of course, this is not
the only factor because we also have to consider the society and culture in which we
are constructing this identity.
Louis Althusser proposed that we are surrounded by structures that he calls
ideologies and through them we recognize ourselves in imaginary relationships to our
real conditions of existence18. These ideologies need a material representation, and
are determined by Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) which he defines as “a certain
number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form
of distinct and specialized institutions”19; then through interpellation of these external
forces we understand ourselves and assume them as part of our identity. They can be
religious, cultural, political, amongst others.
16 Levine, Lacan Reframed, p.17. 17 Bice, Benvenuto, The Works of Jacques Lacan. An Introduction, St. Martin’s Press, NY, 1986, p.55. 18 Cfr. Althusser, Louis, Lenin and Other Essays, Monthly Review Press, NY, 1971, p.162. 19 Althusser, Lenin and Other Essays, p.143.
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He states that in the pre-‐capitalist era the predominant system was the
religious ISA that had also cultural and educational functions and it worked closely
with the family. Then, in mature capitalism the educational ISA took power because it
is in school where the know-‐how is taught to children that will be then ejected into the
production system as peasants, technicians, white-‐collar workers, executives,
intellectuals and so on and so forward conforming the different layers that allow the
capitalist production system to replicate itself20. Nowadays, I would like to propose
that what guides society for the most part is the communications ISA via new
technologies.
We are being more and more pushed to move into the online world, and the
more we do it, the deeper we get in. Labor is moving into the digital from the
networking and recruiting sites like LinkedIn, to the work environment itself in
platforms like oDesk.com. Higher education as well: one can upload academic
knowledge on websites like Wikipedia, Google Scholar. It also takes place in the
context of digitalizing books, as well as with the growing offer of courses and degrees
that can be taken long distance. This is just to name some examples but the same is
happening in any other activity that we can think of. The most obvious example is the
market. According to Nielsen’s Global E-‐commerce Report from August 2014, online
shopping grew 20% from 201321. We can find anything from every part of the world
without leaving our homes, and with it comes the advertisement that is offered on the
basis of our previous purchases. If we want to buy an item online we need to have a
Paypal account, or at least have access to Internet banking. In order to have that
account we need to have an email address and so the endless chain goes, the more we
consume, the more we are producing.
Since the online world is becoming a part of our intimate and familiarly milieu,
we need to grow and develop our personalities in it as well. But even if the online
world refers to the same definition of identity, it includes a different process of
construction that was not considered by the previous one. “Digital identity is 20 Cfr. Althusser, Lenin and Other Essays, pp. 151-‐158. 21 Nielsen Holdings N.V., “E-‐commerce Shifts Into Higher Gear Around the World”, Global E-‐commerce Report, August 2014, Web. < http://ir.nielsen.com/files/doc_financials/Nielsen-‐Global-‐E-‐commerce-‐Report-‐August-‐2014.pdf>, April 21st 2015.
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constructed by different types of data that the user may or may not have the intention
to reveal, which gives a declared identity conformed by information expressed by the
person; an acting identity formed according to the actions that the person does online;
and the inferred identity that is made by the analysis of the actions”22.
In other words, online identity is mainly referred to as the profile created
throughout our different accounts and activities on Internet from our identity data
that matches our offline life, to our behavior while we navigate websites for economic
transactions, shopping, searching, or liking on social networks. The life and
dissemination of these identities is also different from the one offline, which is also
why there are services especially dedicated to help the user control their online
reputation, i.e. Reputation.com, Internetreputation.com, or Webrunner.
Another part of our online identity is conformed by a person's photo stream,
for example Facebook is so convinced of the importance of the image as part of
someone’s identity that has just paid $1bn for the photo-‐sharing service Instagram23.
This topic will be addressed more in depth in the next chapters of this thesis, but
before moving on to that, I will summarize the topic by going back to the questions
proposed at the beginning of the chapter.
What is, then, identity? Identity is a complex set of characteristics that put
together conforms who we are. It goes from innate qualities like DNA and physical
features to a psychological image that we create throughout our lives based on our
experiences, the people around us and the environment in which we move. It is thus
something that is in constant construction.
And is there a difference between online and offline identity? Online identity is
separate from offline identity, which is why we can catfish or we can have different
personas at the same time. They are different because they happen in different
settings and they are built in different ways by different factors. On the other hand,
they share some similarities: they both respond to the same question of who we are;
22 Sainz, Rosa, ed. Identidad digital: el nuevo usuario en el mundo digital, Fundación Telefónica, España, 2013, p.11. My translation. 23 Krotosky, “Online identity”.
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and they are both formed by how we see ourselves, how we imagine the other is going
to perceive us, and the other’s concept of who we are.
Then, they are two things but they are also connected. An online identity that
doesn’t correspond to an offline one is considered an Internet bot (web robot). And an
offline identity is becoming more and more difficult to have without an online one.
Now that this is defined it is possible to explore the role photography plays in the
construction of each one.
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CHAPTER 2
CULTURE VS. NATURE
The role of photography in the construction of identity
As we have seen in the previous chapter, identity is in great part formed by mental
images, but what about its material representation? It is here that photography comes
into play. “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by
which men communicate than by the content of the communication”24 wrote Marshall
McLuhan in 1967 analyzing television. If we accept this statement then we can assume
that the relationship between photography and identity construction cannot be the
same in the digital age than it was before. Even if we photograph the same things, it is
different if it is done with a printed image captured in a negative film with a
photographic camera with the scope of being kept in an album; than a digital
photography taken with a mobile phone and posted live to be seen and commented by
hundreds of people.
Jose van Dijck argues that communication and identity formation were always
intrinsic to photography since it was an analogue media, and the increase in use for
‘live’ communication instead of storing pictures of ‘life’ in digital photography is not
the result of technology but because of a socio-‐cultural change25. This is as true of
digital photography as it was for the analogue. Photography was part of the socio-‐
economical changes of the industrial revolution. It was associated with its indexical
quality because it was born within the philosophical context of positivism. Because of
this, it was constrained to provide proof and work as an evidence tool that sustained
truth. Then yes, culture plays a part but it is not the only factor.
Inventions are made according to the needs of the society that makes them, but
it is also true that a society evolves thanks to the new possibilities that the new
technology offers. Then, it is not only the socio-‐cultural that changed the medium, but
also the other way around. Additionally, the new uses that van Dijck refers to 24 McLuhan, Marshall, The Medium is the Massage, 1967, Penguin Design Series, Penguin Books, 2008, p.8. 25 Cfr. van Dijck, Jose, “Digital Photography: Communication, Identity, Memory”, Visual Communication, Vol. 7, 2008, pp. 57-‐76.
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correspond not to digital photography, but to mobile photography, which is,
technically speaking a different thing. To explain this further, let’s analyze the nature
of each one of the three stages in the development of photography, because as
McLuhan stated it is there where our relationship with it can be explained.
The term analogue means “a thing seen as comparable to another”26 and thus
when we talk about analogue photography we imply that what we see in the
photograph even if it is just a representation, looks like its referent. This is not the
place to expound on the chemical aspect of the photographic technique, but in order
to understand this indexical relationship it is necessary to summarize the basic
principles of the way it works. When the shutter of the camera opens, the film
becomes exposed to the light reflected by the objects that are in front of the lens. Since
film is celluloid covered by a light –sensitive emulsion made with silver-‐halides, it
reacts to this exposure because the light rusts its molecules and produces darkness.
As a result, the lighter objects that reflect more light cause more rusting and thus
become darker in the negative, whilst the darker objects have the opposite effect. In
consequence, when we press the button to make a photograph the physical objects
that we are photographing imprint the film creating an image that remains latent until
it is developed.
Because of this indexical quality embedded into its very nature, analogue
photography was always associated with its verisimilitude as a proof, despite the fact
that it could be altered and post-‐produced, which was known since its invention. But if
this was known, why did we give it the attributes of truth telling? Because, it was born
in a socio-‐cultural moment in which such a device that could provide scientific
documentation was needed.
Digital photography on the other hand is named as such because the image is
transformed into digits. The physical mechanism is in its basis the same as in the
previous cameras: when the shutter is opened the light reflected from the objects goes
into the back of the camera making an imprint, but this time there is no film, but a
CMOS or CCD sensor which is also light-‐sensitive. In this case then the reaction is not
26 “Oxford Dictionary of English plus Audio”.
19
physical but electrical. A sensor is a grid in which each square registers a determined
amount of light by adding electrons to each cell that then are translated and stored in
binary system which will later be read as pixels. The more light each cell receives the
greater number of electrons.
As we can see digital cameras work very similarly to analogue photo cameras,
the biggest change being that the components of the image are no longer grains, but
pixels. But this small technical change entails a larger ontological transformation to
the point that many authors do not even consider it photography anymore but post-‐
photography. One of such authors is Joan Fontcuberta, who published in 2011 the
manifesto: Post-‐Photographic Decalogue27. In his earlier book La cámara de Pandora.
La fotografí@ después de la fotografía he explores in depth this new paradigm, and for
him the fact that a digital photograph is composed by graphic units that can be
individually altered makes it a media much more related to painting or writing than to
analogue photography; which means that making an image is the result of a series of
decisions and with it the indexical qualities get lost and “the sense construction
replaces the representation of reality”28. Thus for him the change in the use that we
give to photography is not fundamentally cultural, but it is embedded in the technical
generation of the image.
The third step in this evolution is mobile photography, which is still in debate
within the academic circles as to whether it is a different type of photography or if it is
just one of the branches of the digital photography29. Personally I subscribe to the idea
that it is an autonomous media even if it is done with digital technologies; on the one
hand because the image processing is different, on the other because it changed once
more our approach to photography. I will explain this further.
The first main difference would be that we are talking about phones that can
take pictures, not cameras that can make phone calls. This might seem a little
dismissive yet the obvious needs to be stated in order to explain the relationship
27 Fontcuberta, Joan, “Por un manifiesto posfotográfico”, La Vanguardia, May 11th 2011, Web. < http://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20110511/54152218372/por-‐un-‐manifiesto-‐posfotografico.html>, March 5th 2015. 28 Fontcuberta, La cámara de Pandora, p.63. 29 Bañuelos, Fotografía y dispositivos móviles.
20
between the device, the technology and the user. Although it is also fair to say that
with the exponential hype in making mobile photographs manufacturers have put
more and more attention into improving the technology of the cameras and image
processors of smartphones. Then, even if nowadays some devices are developed with
the specific function of image making in mind; many of them are not, and this was
even less the case when the phenomenon started. Also, a few technical details need to
be specified at this point in order to make the proper comparison with its
predecessors.
Camera phones capture the image through a lens that lets the light in so that it
can be received by a CMOS sensor, just like digital cameras do. The difference is that
they don’t have a physical shutter or diaphragm, which causes a shutter lag. What this
means in practical terms is that from the moment you press the button there is a small
delay before the actual picture is made. Although many people may not know the
technical explanation for why this happens, for sure they have noticed it. Maybe even
without realizing it we have changed the way we use our phone to take a picture
because we always have to snap a little earlier than the actual picture is made, and
thus we are taking the picture thinking ahead.
The other thing that changes is that the image is not imprinted as a whole but is
processed as a swipe; similar to how a scanner works. This alters the result of the
image, especially if the subject is in motion, but also means another ontological change
in the evolution that Fontcuberta was talking about. According to him analogue
photography is imprinted and digital photography is written30; but what is mobile
photography then? If the image is not created in a fixed moment but just as a beam of
light that passes through and carries on, why not consider then every picture as
something ephemeral; as a mere glimpse of our identity?
Now that the differences between each kind of photography have been cleared
up, we can better understand how the nature of the image relates in different ways to
memory and identity construction. And for that allow me to recall the film Blade
Runner (1982) in order to illustrate the starting point of the argument. The premise of
30 Cfr. Fontcuberta, La cámara de Pandora, pp.59-‐66.
21
the film is to put into question what makes us human, and the approach of director
Riddley Scott is to do it by proposing the existence of improved bio robotic androids
called Nexus 6, also known as “replicants”, that are identical to a human being with
the exception that they are not supposed to develop emotions, which is why they can
only live for four years. What makes these replicants different from other kind of
androids is that they are implanted with a memory because “Their assurance of a
future relies on the possibility of acquiring a past”31.
The main female character is Rachel, a Nexus who is not aware of her condition
of replicant, and she based her entire humanity in one document: a photograph she
was told was from her childhood as part of the memory implantation. When she
learns that it is not hers but from another person’s past her entire identity crumbles,
her humanity is gone and she symbolically throws the picture on the floor and leaves.
In the same way as Rachel we all used to relate to photography in the analogue era;
which is why it was safeguarded in albums that were showcased in special occasions
with people that were close to us; or for our own reviewing when we wanted to
remember something or someone that is no longer there, it was an imprint in our
paths.
With analogue photography we used to photograph certain ‘events’ in our life
that we considered worthy of keeping because what we had lived is what made us
who we are today. Our identity was based in those pillars, we trusted in the
indexicality of the medium (even if we knew it could be altered) and thus we gave to it
a condition of truth. Our emotions were linked to the image because we believed in its
verisimilitude. Susan Sontag wrote: “To photograph is to appropriate the thing
photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels
like knowledge and, therefore, like power (…) photographic images, which now
provide most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of
the present”32. Because of this we used to approach photography with a retrospective
glance that fitted the traditional conception of identity that I have explored in the first
31Bruno, Giuliana, Ramble City: Postmodernism and “Blade Runner”, October, Vol.41, 1987, < http://work.colum.edu/~zfurness/theories/bladerunner.pdf>, May 29th 2011,p.70. 32 Sontag, Susan, On Photography, Rosetta Books, NY, 2005, p.11.
22
chapter; the one that Jacques Lacan in his earliest works proposed to be based on
three parameters: our development in life; the idealized image of ourselves; and the
influence that others have had in us33. If we analyze these instances, we can see that it
is something that regards our past, the environment in which we grew up and the
experiences and people that shaped us in order to become the person that we are in
the present. It is thus something that we no longer have the power to change; it’s
fixed.
Although we had a conception of identity as something fixed it was no less
complex, which in relation to photography we can see how even if both things relate
to the past it still represented a contradictory state in which you could never match
one with the other. Roland Barthes already analyzed the multiple selves that were
shown in a portrait when he stated: “Four image-‐repertoires intersect here, oppose
and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am,
the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one
he makes use of to exhibit his art.”34. But this flaw can then be associated with the fact
that, as discussed before, we are expecting for this kind of photography to look like it’s
original and tell the truth. Then if we are struggling and building our identity
throughout our entire lives, how could an object that fixates time show that reality?
The artist Willem Popelier has dedicated his career to explore the photographic
representations of identity. In his project Rejected Identities (2009) he “focuses on the
confrontation between personal identity and obligatory identification photography”35.
The Project consisted in taking his portrait following the 39 rules that the Dutch
government requires for an official photo id. After being submitted to the government
and being inspected, 20 out of 39 were rejected. The obsolescence of a traditional,
objective, mechanical portrait that can represent us is being exposed in this artwork.
In the same way Barthes did not recognize himself in a portrait, Popelier was not
33 Cfr. Bice, The Works of Jacques Lacan, p. 34. 34 Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography, Hill and Wang, NY, 1982, p. 13. 35 Popelier, Willem, Rejected Identities, 2009, < http://www.willempopelier.nl/rejected.html> , April 23rd 2015.
23
recognize by the government. Yet, an official document needs a photograph we still
give validity to the ‘objectivity’ of the image in order to be recognizable.
Then, if we move into digital photography where indexicality is lost we can
relate to it in a different way, “Systems of photo-‐realist digital synthesis have replaced
the notion of imprint for a record without imprint that’s lost in an spiral of
mutations”36, the same mutations that we are going through in our bodies and minds.
As we discussed before, the use and conception of photography has shifted from being
a memory tool into a sense constructor; we now photograph thinking about the
future: how we want to be seen by others, how many likes are we going to get, and so
on. For this reason we use it to portray ourselves not as who we are but who we want
to be.
In light of this evolution, Popelier did another project called To Do It Yourselfie
Guide (2014-‐2015). In it, the artist analyzed tens of thousands of selfies posted online
and created a guide of 66 rules to create the perfect selfie ‘to capture the best version
of yourself’37. The idea of establishing rules to a selfie seems to be contradictory to the
very nature of it. The point of these photographs is that you take control over how you
wish to represent yourself, but then again, if we are doing it to be recognized and
validated by the other, we need the image to be popular. How do we escape this
vicious circle then? What we need is to escape the format of the portrait in order to
represent our identities.
With the invention and popularization of digital cameras, photography became
more accessible to the average user; it became cheaper, not to say free after the
investment in the camera was made. It became endless, there were no material
limitations anymore and this resulted in a proliferation of images unimaginable in the
analogue era, there was no more reason to hesitate whether or not something was
worth capturing. We can now represent ourselves in a bigger spectrum of situations,
do it more often and also include objects and scenes from everyday life that help
36 Fontcuberta, La cámara de Pandora, p.13. 37 Popelier, Willem, To Do It Yourselfie Guide, 2014-‐15, < http://www.willempopelier.nl/diyselfie.html> April 23rd 2015.
24
showcase our identities that in the past were not considered important enough to be
recorded in photography.
In 1993 Stephen J. Dollinger and Stephanie M. Clancy conducted an experiment
comprising 201 college students using R. C. Ziller’s authophotographic method to
answer the question who are you? With it they found two different uses for objects in
these pictures:
“Some essays are commonplace, repetitive, prosaic, and at times even dull […] not unlike children who respond to verbal “who are you?” tasks by listing their most treasured possessions or physical characteristics […] In contrast, other subjects use possessions to convey metaphorically […] a sense of values or traits that are salient in their lives”38. Digital photography and mobile photography allow us to explore and showcase
ourselves in this continuous manner and this is why we find social networks filled
with images of the things we buy, the food we eat and many other pictures in which
we do not necessarily appear, but symbolically form part of the identity we are
building.
Now every aspect of our lives is being photographed and registered, and not just
by us; we are living in a virtual panopticon in which “There are, for example, almost
no circumstances now that can not be recorded or archived as digital imagery or
information”39. So, if we are being registered all the time, why do we willingly
contribute to this ‘surveillance’? It all comes back to our identity construction.
According to Lacan’s theories,
“Whereas the individual sees from one specific point in space, that same individual is susceptible to being seen on all sides (…) In its exposure to the invisible gaze of others, the subject discovers itself as prey to the discomposure and objectification (…) also known as scopophilia, the libidinal drive of the look is not only to see the object of desire (voyeurism) but also to make oneself seen by the other as the desired object of its gaze (exhibitionism)”40.
38 Dollinger, Stephen and Stephanie Clancy, “Identity, Self, and Personality: II. Glimpses Through the Autophotographic Eye”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 64, no.6, 1993, p. 1064. 39 Crary, Jonathan, 24/7 Late Capitalism and The Ends of Sleep, Verso, London, 2013, p.30. 40 Levine, Lacan Reframed, pp. 69-‐70.
25
Nowadays with digital technologies, we are being watched from every angle at all
times, which exacerbates the exhibitionism to the point that we feel the constant need
to photograph and post every moment of our lives for it to be seen by others. In a way
it’s a defense mechanism: if we are being seen anyway, we might as well be seen as we
want to be seen, to the point that it is no longer a mask, but something we are
interiorizing. Then we are at the same time object and subject, we see the others as
much as we are being looked at because we construct our identity not only as we see
ourselves but as we want to be seen reflecting also in the image we have from the
other.
We still have not let go entirely of the traditional approach to photography; for
example, in certain events like a wedding we are still hiring a professional
photographer. We still need these events to be registered with the analogue gaze, even
if made with a digital camera; but the new wedding photography packages offer the
design of websites for the guests to upload their photos made with their smartphones
in real time. Other contradictory developments are the new technologies like Prynt, a
smartphone case that prints your mobile photos in 50 seconds; or My Social Books,
that automatically turns your Facebook or Instagram timelines into a book. Since
mobile photography started we have been moving between the offline and online
world, between printed and digital representations. In the next chapter I will be
exploring the implications of this passage.
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CHAPTER 3
CROSS OVER
Online digital photography as a mediator between online and offline identities
In the past two chapters I have shown to what extent we live in a world of images, but
this is not a new discourse; many different authors have analyzed it since at least the
1960s. Guy Debord (1967) stated in his book Society of the Spectacle: “Fragmented
views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-‐world that
can only be looked at”41 to which Michel Foucault seems to respond in 1979: “Our
society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance... We are neither in the
amphitheater, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of
power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism.”42 The two
authors might disagree on which side of the gaze we are, but both theories coincide in
the fact that our role was passive, either by receiving the images, or by being the
subject of them.
Lacan instead explained with his diagrams of the ‘gazing triangles’43 (1973) the
relationship between the gaze, the image, the object, and the subject. In the first
triangle he represents the geometrical perspective traced by painters since the
Renaissance; the second one is his own contribution in which the light emanating
from the objects in the world reflect towards the seeing subject turning him into the
object to be seen, and the encounter between the environment and the subject was
situated in the middle, in the screen. Therefore, as Steven Z. Levine explains while
correcting the traditional English translation of Lacan’s work, “It is in the screen that I
am in the picture. I am in the picture not as an objectively seeing eye, but, rather, as a
subjectively seeking I”44. Which translated into post-‐photographic language would be
41 Debord, Guy, Society of the Spectacle, Treason Press, Canberra, 2002, p.6. 42 Jay, Martin, “From the Empire of the Gaze, to the Society of Spectalce: Foucault and Debord”, Downcast Eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought, University of California Press, U.S.A. 1993, p.381. 43 Lacan, Jacques, ‘What is a Picture?’, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The Seminars of Jacques Lacan Book XI, Norton & Company, NY, 1998, p.106. 44 Levine, Lacan Reframed, p. 81.
27
Imago ergo sum45 (I photograph, therefore I exist). This is not far from McLuhan’s
theories on television, in which he states: “…images are projected at you. You are the
screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point. This creates a sort
of inwardness, a sort of reverse perspective” 46 We are the model and the
photographer, we are physical entities as much as we are the image, we are subjects
as much as we are objects; and it is in this passage from one to the other that we
become information and our identities become fluid.
We are the screen in which all scenarios come together because we consume
images as much as we produce them. What has changed since those theories is that
“The idea of long blocks of time spent exclusively as a spectator is outmoded” says
Crary47; he argues that we no longer receive images passively. Other theorists such as
Boris Groys agree with him, writing “In their free time, people work—they travel, play
sports, and exercise. They don’t read books, but write for Facebook, Twitter, and other
social media. They do not look at art but take photos, make videos, and send them to
their relatives and friends. People have become very active indeed”48.
But, have we become this active because of the technology that we had at hand,
or was it the other way around? Image theorist Xavier Aguirre states that “We
invented socially the need of taking photographs, and thus we perfected the
mechanisms to do it more frequently”49. Photographic cameras appeared for the first
time in a mobile phone in 1995 and only one year later half of them had one, reaching
the next logical step in 1997 when the first photographic image was sent via mobile
service. Philippe Kahn developed a technique to make photographs and send them
with a cell phone. The picture he chose to send for the first time was not of an
important socio-‐political event, nor it was an artistic photograph, it was a snapshot of
his newborn child.
Kahn’s choice of using this new technology to send as a first image a picture
from his private life was not trivial; it set a trend of how we will use from then on his 45 Fontcuberta, La cámara de Pandora, p.17. 46 McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, p.125. 47 Crary, 24/7, p.53. 48 Groys, Boris, “Under the Gaze of Theory”, e-‐flux journal, vol.35, May 2012, p. 5. 49 Bañuelos, Fotografía y dispositivos móviles, p. 96.
28
invention, then we probably did invented this social need. While it is true that artist
and professional photographers have started to use mobiles in order to explore a new
aesthetic, the majority of the pictures taken with mobile cameras are still of our daily
routines. Our lives happen simultaneously offline and online thanks to photography:
“Event and documentation are now fused. When we applied the indexicality of
photography we used to think that some of the referent got embedded in the
photograph; now we are to think the opposite: it’s some of the photograph that gets
embedded in the referent"50.
We are photographing offline events to send into the online world, but it is also
the mobile image who is guiding what we do offline. James Bridle, in his New Aesthetic
theory is proposing how the digital world is shaping the real one. We are responding
back with the creation of certain objects, fabrics, street art, sculptures, buildings and
even military vehicles that are being designed and colored based on pixels, something
that is not found in nature but comes from the screen: “…because they’re ready-‐made
digital artifacts, because they look like this. Because we’ve prepared something in the
physical world for its entry into the virtual”51. Consciously or not, much of what we do
is guided by what we want to post online in order to build a certain profile, in order to
get likes, for people to comment on the images we share, for others to participate on
our lives.
Allow me to illustrate this point with the work of Amalia Ulman. An editorial
description of her work from BBY magazine states: “Her art is closely intertwined
with her person, and it is often difficult to tell what is what in her work. One may ask,
why are we so desperately trying to find the dividing line between the two? Is not life,
especially in this digital age, in some degree a non-‐stop performance act?”52 On April
19th 2014 she uploaded to her Instagram account a jpeg file with the text “Excellences
& Perfections. Part I” starting with this within her ongoing profiles of Instagram and
Facebook what would be an online performance.
50 Fontcuberta, La cámara de Pandora, p.28. 51 Bridle, James, “Waving at the Machines”, 2011 Web Directions South. Transcription. Web. < http://www.webdirections.org/resources/james-‐bridle-‐waving-‐at-‐the-‐machines/> October 10th 2014. 52 Ulman, Amalia, “Contributor”, BBY magazine, < http://bbymag.com/Contributor-‐Amalia-‐Ulman>, January 5th 2015.
29
During the next few months the Amalia that we could see on her profiles was a
different one than the Amalia you could see before, and different from the Amalia that
existed offline. She did not do a transformation of herself, but a multiplication of her
identities in which it was difficult to understand which one was she, and that is
because all of them were. The path of her script was to go from innocence to sin to
redemption, which she portrayed with the stereotypes of the cute girl, the bitch/sugar
baby, the girl next door.
When she spoke about her project in the conference Do You Follow? Art in
Circulation she said that it was an entirely fictionalized persona: “My online
representation didn’t represented me anymore”53 but was not her offline version
changing along her characters? Her life, her activities and even her body had to
change. First of all, in order to do the performance she needed to isolate herself from
any contact that was not involved in the project. Then on the first stage, when she was
being the popular “it” girl from Instagram she received an email from a professional
photographer that wanted to shoot her, and she agreed to model for this unpaid photo
session to which she attended as that girl.
Another example, and maybe one of the most significant happened during the
second stage, while playing the sugar baby role. She underwent two aesthetic
procedures in her nose and cheeks: “The legitimacy of this procedure was a strategy
for the fictional boob job to seem more believable. If the only public appearance was
that of the talk [with the plastic surgeon which she recorded and posted] the audience
would now believe whatever I presented to them”54 -‐she said-‐ and then she continued
to train and take pole dancing lessons “to make everything seem more realistic”55.
This comes to show that in order to change online some part of our offline life has to
change as well. We make decisions and compromise in order to balance the
personalities in both worlds.
53 Ulman, Amalia, “Do You Follow? Art in Circulation 3”, 2014 Rhizome. Transcription. Web. < http://rhizome.org/editorial/2014/oct/28/transcript-‐do-‐you-‐follow-‐panel-‐three/>February 10th 2015. 54 Ulman, Do you Follow? 55 Ulman, Do you Follow?
30
Ulman made a conscious decision and prepared a script on what she was going
to post for four months and it still had implications and crossed over the screen into
her offline self. We all go through this process everyday more or less consciously
whenever we decide to make a photo and then share it, “we see coming to light the
idea whereby being is constitutively, immediately, a power of mutation. In fact, the
non-‐self-‐identity of being is not simply a passage from one identity to another through
the negation of the prior identity”56. With the disincarnation of our physical bodies
and places we multiply the possibilities of exploring who we want to be and slowly
become that person. Who we are offline will influence our online presence, no matter
how much we try to hide it, every choice we make whilst constructing our online
profiles shows in some level how we think, who we are or how we want to be seen;
but what happens online will also have an impact offline, it is a two way street.
When we speak of online digital photography, the act of sharing our
photographs in a social network in order to show who we are and where we are, “the
merit that we attribute to an image no longer resides in the process of making it but in
the act of recognizing it; from that recognition will derive a new use”57. A photograph
is no longer seen as history but as a narrativity that keeps on building itself in which
we write the script, direct the performance and play the main role. But like in any
narration we need an audience, one that is willing to follow which is how mobile
photography became also a conversational and socializing tool. If I post a photograph
that gets no likes or comments its life span diminishes even more and eventually
looses its value.
When social networks started we used to confirm the identity of the user by
suspension of disbelief in which we willingly accept the fiction that is presented to us
as a reality. This works in the same way that we approach films; we know is a fiction
but we immerse ourselves in the story. This might explain why so many people still
think of it as a façade, not because we did not know it is a production but because we
were all part of the endless cycle of consumption-‐production. Now, is not just about
56 Halewood, M. ‘On Whitehead and Deleuze. The process of materiality’. In: Configurations. Vol. 13, n 1, Winter 2005, p.3. 57 Fontcuberta, La cámara de Pandora, p.174.
31
producing an image, “…but of postproducing, launching, and accelerating it. It is about
the public relations of images across social networks”58; phenomena that Hito Steyerl
called circulationism in her essay Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead? (2013).
This is one of the symptoms that make her state that the Internet has gone
offline and become our environment. She sees this not as a positive thing, but as a
dystopic result of the bad use we make of technology. She continues by analyzing the
consequences of this and she proposes that “if images start pouring across screens
and invading subject and object matter, the major and quite overlooked consequence
is that reality now widely consists of images; or rather, of things, constellations, and
processes formerly evident as images”59. And then she continues to “the ultimate
consequence of the Internet moving offline. If images can be shared and circulated,
why can’t everything else be too? If data moves across screens, so can its material
incarnations move across shop windows and other enclosures”60. Which would mean
that we are not just creating our data doubles but we are becoming them.
If analogue photography was the product of the industrial revolution; digital
photography is the result of an economy that values information as merchandise61,
and mobile photography would be then the outcome of the real time web model in
which bodies are disincarnated, space gets disembodied and time collapses.
“Mobile photography is marked by the shortness of the time between making it and the response it gets. Generally is not memory, identity or attachment. It is defined by being quick and ephemeral. Mobile photography is a space in which, if you create any sense, symbol or identity; it is precarious and temporal. Nonetheless, the photographic cellular phone device is established as means of appropriation and identity constructor before the strategies of a reality influenced by media of stereotypical representation, that allows the construction of a singular imaginary and permits self acknowledgement”62
58 Aikens, Nick, and Annie Fletcher, eds. “Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead?” Too Much World. The Films of Hito Steyerl, Sternberg Press, Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, 2014, p.37. 59 Aikens, Too Much World, p.34. 60 Aikens, Too Much World, pp.37-‐38. 61 Fontcuberta, La cámara de Pandora, p.12. 62 Bañuelos, Fotografía y dispositivos móviles, p. 67.
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Mobile photography is still intimately related to the formation of our identity. It is our
identity that has developed until it became fluid, and thus photography evolved with
it. It is no longer something that shows who we are, but that sheds a light into who we
are becoming and it serves at the same time as something that shapes us. Our
portraits are not us anymore, but we are our portraits.
33
CONCLUSIONS
As an artistic researcher I intended to explore the role of digital online photography in
the construction of identity both from the theoretical point of view as well as the
practical. Throughout this thesis I dedicated a part of each chapter to analyze an
artwork that explores the topic I was studying because both approaches need to
complement each other. Through academic research we can connect different
disciplines to look into the many implications of the online digital photography. In this
case I chose to analyze identity, but it can also be studied as a technological,
economical, sociological issue, amongst many others. Nonetheless, it will always be
from an external viewpoint. Whilst a photographer and an artist can experiment with
the media thus exploring it first hand, from the inside.
Another difference would be the time frame. Art can be more immediate since
the methodology is more intuitive and can foresee the impact before theory catches
on. As photographers, the democratization of photography from a very early stage
impacted us, and artists can start questioning before official sources come along to
support your hypothesis. For example, the Facebook ID Card project – studied in the
first chapter – could not be validated within the academia because it is still not official
that online identity is valid; yet it is extremely accurate. A small sample is the partner-‐
immigration process for the relocation of a non-‐European partner: whilst it is not
listed as an official requirement, a Facebook photo of the couple can validate the
relationship. This is commonly used by the government to confirm that it is not a fake
marriage and then grants the residence permit.
The intention behind putting together these different ways of producing
knowledge was to open a space of debate that would allowed a transversal way of
thinking that posses more questions for future research. Having said this, I will
proceed to my findings. Who we are is a question with no possible answer because
identity is something that we are always constructing. We are no one because we are
constantly becoming someone. In order to build this identity many factors interact at
the same time and they often conflict. The clash comes between the two parts that
form our identity: our physicality, individuality, who we want to be, what comes from
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within ourselves on the one hand; and on the other hand the society and surroundings
in which we are, how we fit in similarity to others, how they see us and the
possibilities we have to move within that environment.
Since all these factors come into play it would be impossible for our online and
offline identities to be the one and the same. Whilst our internal conceptions and
desires can be similar, the external forces are different. Offline we have material
boundaries starting from our bodies, but those become disincarnated inside the
Internet. Additionally the people in whom we reflect ourselves offline are the ones
within physical proximity, whilst online this community grows. Through the Internet
we belong in an updated virtual version of what Benedict Anderson called an
imagined community63. A collective body bound together by a common discourse
created by new technology (referring to printed press) that favors circulation.
Nowadays instead of creating a national community, technology has created a
globalized world in which we can relate to people thanks to similarities and mutual
identification regardless of the location and culture. And finally the space-‐time context
in which we live is completely different, online we can be everywhere at the same
time.
Our milieu has expanded and we became disembodied, thus we exist and have
complementary identities in both the offline and the online worlds. We are constantly
passing from one to the other as if it were a Mobius strip in which the flip that allows
the crossing is mobile photography. Its capability to work as a mediator for our
identities comes not only from its intrinsic qualities but also from the use we make of
it.
From the moment the image is captured with a camera phone, the picture is
not imprinted as a whole but is created line by line; thus a photograph is not fixating
one fragmented moment in time but a continuous flux. This change in the nature of
the image is echoed by a transformation in the perception we have of photography as
media and thus the relationship we make between it and our identity. The media has
evolved to fit with our own development into having fluid identities. 63 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, Verso, London, 2006.
35
Another change in the technical aspect that had repercussions in the way we
conceive photography is that the lack of physical shutter and diaphragm create a delay
between the snapping of the picture and the actual image being taken, which means
we have to think ahead about the image. This relates to the way we now approach
photography, no longer with a retrospective glance in connection to memory, but
thinking about the future and the identity we are constructing in order to become who
we want to be.
Then if we are our images and thanks to digital online photography those
pictures are at its core raw data we are information that cannot only be modified at
will, but also can be sent and circulate without boundaries and as a result our
identities become fluid. Our lives happen simultaneously offline and online having a
constant feedback between one and the other. But we are not yet accustomed to this
new fluidity mainly because we are not aware of it, which is why we still think of our
online identities as a mask that covers our ‘real’ identities without realizing how much
we are interiorizing it. Even when we are deliberately trying to showcase ourselves as
someone different (when we are catfishing), it reveals who we wish to be, or the
audience that we want to attract, where we want to belong; and that too conforms
part of our identity.
We are yet again in a transition period, as McLuhan, many years ago, in the pre-‐
digital world said: “We approach the new with the psychological conditioning and
sensory responses of the old”64 Thus, we continuously snap pictures of our everyday
life in order to construct an identity but we still hire a photographer and print his
images of our wedding; because this new identity needs certain anchor points that
fixate it. Furthermore, our identities will never catch on to each other because the
more we are becoming through our pictures, the farther away it will be the goal. Just
like the Mobius strip, whenever you think you are coming back to the starting point
closing the cycle, you cross to the other side and start a new one.
The crisis that McLuhan revealed we had with television we also faced with the
adoption of other technologies, like in the passage from analogue to digital
64 McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, p.94.
36
photography. The fact that we are still in this crisis in relation to mobile photography
and our online identities is because it is not only about the device itself; as Crary
argues:
“In the false placement of today's most visible products and devices with in an explanatory lineage that includes the wheel, the pointed arch, movable type, and so forth, there is a concealment of the most important techniques invented in the last 150 years: the various systems for the management and control of human beings. This pseudo-‐historical formulation of the present as a digital age, supposedly homologous with a "bronze age" or "steam age," perpetuates the illusion of a unifying and durable coherence to the many incommensurable constituents of contemporary experience.”65
Then, it is not just about technology, but also about the use we make of it as we
saw with Jose van Dijck and Hito Steyerl. In the case of mobile photography it was “the
birth of the conversational image and the image as a social bond”66 and this was the
result of socio-‐cultural and economic factors of our society. It is about the
consumption-‐production system in which information is considered a commodity, and
that we continue to perpetuate conscious or unconsciously.
It is also about the omnipresence created in the real time web paradigm that
causes the folding of time in which past, present and future happen at the same time.
This makes everything ephemeral: the products, the devices, the images and our
identities; and space becomes an ungraspable concept losing its physical limitations.
Which entails a different “relationship more or less deep that we keep with reality,
with others, with the things that we consider ours and we let go alternatively”67. The
line that separates the online and the offline has become blurred. What is an image
and what is its referent does not matter anymore.
According to Jonathan Crary this new paradigm “disables vision through
processes of homogenization, redundancy, and acceleration”68. But, as I hopefully
showed throughout this thesis, if we repeat the commonplaces is not because we are
65 Crary, 24/7, p.36. 66 Bañuelos, Fotografía y dispositivos móviles, p.8. 67 Bañuelos, Fotografía y dispositivos móviles, p. 67. 68 Crary, 24/7, p.33.
37
passive. Photographs have become symbols from a social convention that help us to
communicate through images, with them we are expressing to the other who we are.
Furthermore, mobile photography has helped us explore our identities in order
to understand each other and ourselves better. In 1980 Roland Barthes questioned
the classification we give to photography:
“The various distributions we impose upon it are in fact either empirical (Professionals I Amateurs), or rhetorical (Landscapes/Objects/Portraits/Nudes), or else aesthetic (Realism/Pictorialism) , in any case external to the object, without relation to its essence, which can only be (if it exists at all) the New of which it has been the advent; for these classifications might very well be applied to other, older forms of representation”69
Thanks to technical advantages and social characteristics mobile photography allows
us to escape the traditional idea of representation and experiment with our own
potential. We are living in a virtual panopticon in which we are being observed at
every moment, sometimes without us realizing it. Our identities are being mapped
out by digital traces, but with mobile photography we feel as we have gain control on
how we showcase ourselves. A power that we will not give up easily and therefore
this is a tendency that will only continue to grow.
Since all of these socio-‐cultural and economic factors affected our lives, we
became more individualistic and isolated in the physical world. The traditional
community got disintegrated and we needed to create a bigger one online. Our need to
connect with others through data got exacerbated and we need to get immediate
recognition from our network. As a result the process of image production, post-‐
production and sharing was accelerated. With this, the quality and content of the
image lost some of its relevance, we need to post a photograph that others will easily
read and interpret. Through these images they will be able to construct a narrativity
with which they can engage because it is familiar, and that is how we create our
identity: we create it with the image, and the other validates it with a like.
It is all about popularity, it is all about networks, and it is all connected. Allow
me to integrate a personal experience. While writing this thesis I felt the need to test 69 Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida, p.4.
38
some of the theoretical statements I was doing, to which I decided to create an online
profile from scratch. I reset an old phone and started the configuration. But a
smartphone without apps is just a phone, which is why I needed to install some of
them to which I was asked to log in with a Google account. For that I created a Gmail
account with a different name than the one I already had, and started downloading
apps. Some of them, like Tinder asked me for a Facebook account, so, I created one.
But that was not enough, as it required me to have at least fifty friends on it in order to
be valid. In a matter of fifteen minutes I had achieved the goal.
I started getting suggestions of pages and products, and I liked and followed
them and ended up with a new identity in less than an hour. This alter ego ended up
very similar to my original online identity. This might not be very surprising because
the results and recommendations that we get are ordered by the amount of clicks and
visitors. For example, if you search something on Google, the first results might not be
the most relevant, but the most popular. Then the bigger surprise came later, when I
opened my laptop it gave me the option of logging in with my usual account or with
my newly created one. Somehow the system knew it was the same offline person
doing both online identities and thus sent the update to my other devices.
The technical explanation for this recognition escapes the scope of the
research; and while I am not saying that it is impossible to cheat the system, I will
state that in order to do so you need to have some information and technology
knowledge. And thus the average user, like me, does not have many possibilities of
completely separate the offline identity with the online one.
In the same way that our offline life passes to the online world even when we
do not mean to do it, the information runs in the other way. We are interiorizing
offline our online practices. To give a very straightforward example I will use food
porn: whatever dish we are posting is the same food that we are feeding our material
bodies.
Photographing and uploading have become part of our identity because, as
Andrew M. Cox explains: “The practice approach reminds us that information is
essentially absorbed through the body, the senses, decentering more cerebral
39
aspects”70. Thanks to mobile photography we have slowly incorporated new practices
that involve our body.
The social need of creating a new identity within the online world has changed
our moves, our activities, our way of conceiving and presenting ourselves. And this
tendency is bound to increase as new technologies continue to arrive. Google Glass is a
pair of smart glasses that amongst other properties of smart devices also allows us to
take a photo of literally what we are looking at. The way to snap the photo is either by
pressing a button in the glasses -‐ adding once more another movement -‐ or by voice
command for a hands free way; and adding the voice involves as well another level of
brain connection to the photo making activity.
Photo cameras are getting smaller, are being incorporated in more devices and
they are even going into our bodies. For example the next generation of smart glasses:
iOptik from the company Innovega. They are glasses combined with contact lenses in
order to allow the user, amongst other advantages, to focus on both close and faraway
objects. And with these innovations we will interiorize more and more the online
identity into the offline one and vice versa. It is important that we continue to analyze
and theorize the evolution of this phenomenon. Some artists have already started to
explore this issue71 and theorists are not far behind. Thanks to mobile digital
photography the line that today still divides our two identities will become more and
more blurred.
70 Cox, Andrew M., “Information in social practice: A practice approach to understanding information activities in personal photography”, Journal of Information Science, Vol. 39, Information School, University of Sheffield, 2013, p.69. 71 Artist Evan Roth made a series of lambda prints called Multi-‐Touch Paintings (Roth, Evan, Multi-‐Touch Paintings, Web. < http://www.evan-‐roth.com/work/multi-‐touch-‐finger-‐paintings/>, May 3rd 2015) based on the gestures we make with our fingers while using a touchscreen, movements that we did not made before the digital era. Another example is the work of artist Catherine Balet entitled I love Me, I love Myself, I do. In it she explores how “Teenagers have an enhanced need for self-‐presentation. Communicating their identity to others works as an act of auto-‐revelation. Mobile phones have become a sort of digital prosthesis which connects the "real me" to the "virtual me” through social networks, creating a double personality” (Balet, Catherine, Interview, Zone Zero, September 25th 2014, Web. < http://zonezero.com/en/liquid-‐identity/202-‐i-‐love-‐me-‐i-‐love-‐myself-‐i-‐do#interview>, May 3rd 2015) The video shows the photographic gesture of the selfie becoming a preformatting practice that relates to our identity.
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