Photography | Fauxtography | iPhoneography#mac281

@rob_jewitt

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHIC CULTURES ONLINE

What is photography?

After nearly 200 years of capturing images “we still do not know what photography is” (Kember, 2008: 175)

After nearly 200 years of capturing images “we still do not know what photography is” (Kember, 2008: 175)

Infrastructures of image production (cameras, film stock, memory cards, etc)

Technologies of image production (labs, chemicals, computers, software, expertise)

Distribution/exhibition of images

What is photography? - a product of socio-technical relations.

‘the socio-technical history of photography could be seen as a pendulum constantly moving and swinging through cyclic changes between the know-how necessary to create images, and the artifacts used for that purpose.

Throughout these cycles, there are also ongoing trends that persist […] these trends also shape visual images and social uses’(Cruz & Meyer, 2012: 208)

Stage 1: 19th Century

• Nicéphore Niépce• Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre• William Henry Fox Talbot

Stage 2: circa 1900-1930

• George Eastman• Creation of ‘snapshots’• Kodak Brownie• Postal service• The press• National Geographic

Stage 3: 1930-1990

• Professionalisation • Artistic• Group f/64

• Ansel Adams• Paul Strand• Edward Weston

• Pictorialism• Alfred Stiglitz

• Expensive SLRs• Technique

Stage 4: 1990-now

• Digitalisation• Networked• Electronic• Ubiquitous

We’re all photographers now?

‘produsage’ (Axel Bruns, 2008: 1)‘the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement’

Production + Consumption = Remediation

“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies” (Susan Sontag, 1977: 24)

Democratising?

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

• Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Axel Bruns (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang

• Michel De Certeau (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

• Edgar Gómez Cruz and Eric T. Meyer (2012) ‘Creation and Control in the Photographic Process: iPhones and the emerging fifth moment of photography’ Photographies, 5:2.

• S. Kember (2008) “The Virtual Life of Photography.” Photographies, 1.2, pp.175–203.• Roberta Sassatelli (2007) Consumer Culture: History, Theory and Politics. London: Sage.• Jonathan Schroeder (2002) Visual Consumption, London: Routledge.• Don Slater (1995) “Domestic Photography and Digital Culture.” In Martin Lister (ed),

The Photographic Image in Digital Culture.. New York: Routledge, 129–46.• Susan Sontag (1977) On Photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.• Karin Wagner (2011) ‘Moblogging, Remediation and The New Vernacular’,

Photographies, 4:2, 209-228

IMAGES

• Camera expo (2009, auggie tolosa)• Negatives (2010, olleycoffey)• Annie Leibovitz Exhibit Wall (2007, Carl_C)• Times Sqaure (2005, Dave Kliman)• iPhone Photography (2013, robjewitt)