The digitization of the personal photograph within the framework of interconnected and networked systems of communication channels has led to the evolution of the function of the personal photograph from personal memory to public record. The personal digital photograph now plays a more central function in personal and cultural identity formation.
By personal photography, we are referring to photographs taken on personal capture devices without being prompted by compensation or the promise of compensation. We are concerned with those photographs that would have ended up in shoeboxes, family albums, scrapbooks, and a few frames scattered about our living spaces.
There is a clear trend towards image or photograph becoming central to networked communication. The ubiquitousness of photo-centered technologies has supported this trend: digital cameras are built into most communication devices from phones to laptops and every social networking tool worth its hosting cost will contain some sort of photo sharing mechanism. The digital cameras themselves are now commonly equipped with hooks into the network for immediate sharing and archiving. In turn, the popularity of these functions have rendered it a requirement for any future communication devices to include photo-taking, sharing, and archiving functions as a feature.
Burnett, in his book How Images Think, reminds us that “images are both the outcome and progenitors of a vast and interconnected image-world.” In networked communication channels, the image or the photograph is not the communication itself, but rather, simultaneously, the prompt and the result of communication.
A personal photograph shared on a social networking platform is not merely a externalization and a sharing of a personal experience or memory. Such a photo can now generate response: it can be “favorited” by others, it can generate responses or a discussion between the viewer and creator, it can be repurposed, reframed, reinterpreted and remixed. It can also be tagged by the creator or the users and thus becoming part of other individual’s memory or visual history.
Clay Shirky, in Here Comes Everybody, shares with us the story of the Coney Island Mermaid Parade. The parade is of no particular significance, it is a hippie summer parade. Few people outside those who attend it and photograph it would ever have heard about it. A quick search for the tag “mermaidparade” on the photo-sharing site Flickr returns over 45,337 images.
Shirky shares the example to demonstrate the kind of organizing possible with little to no overhead using sharing technologies like Flickr. He also uses this example to demonstrate how this simple act of sharing anchors and creates community.
I would add to Shirky’s observation that these communities on Flickr are forming over a visual prompt, namely a personal photograph. The collection, collation, and linking of personal images en masse on a public forum like Flickr turns these individual images from personal memories to a public record. The previously unknown and undocumented Mermaid Parade now has a collective identity. Year after year, if people continue using the same tag, we will have a visual history of its evolution, of those who attended, of the costumes, of the weather in Coney Island on the day of the parade, of the streets it passed through, but most striking, we now also have a record of individual reactions to it. Over time, the continuous digitization of the acts of taking, sharing, and archiving of the personal photograph is generating cultural artifacts of our time.
A collective identity, and a cultural artifact of the time from scrapbooks and albums to Gigapans (inauguration photos); photosynths (creation of panaramic and 3d constructions); dynamic range photos (super saturated and detailed versions).
References
van Dijck, J. (2008). Digital photography: communication, identity, memory. VISUAL COMMUNICATION. 7 (1), 57-76.
Photographs and Memories
Koepnick, Lutz P. (Lutz Peter)
South Central Review, Volume 21, Number 1, Spring 2004, pp. 94-129 (Article)
Burnett, R. (2004). How images think. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: The Penguin Press.
