Personal Photography, Digital Technologies and the Uses of the Visual
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Visual Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2, June 2011 Personal photography, digital technologies and the uses of the visual NANCY A. VAN HOUSE Photography has been a wildly successful consumer I define personal photography as that which is done by technology. The shift from film to digital has, if anything, non-professionals for themselves and their friends and increased both photographic activity and enthusiasm on intimates. It subsumes but is not limited to family and the part of photographers, viewers and subjects. In this tourist photography. A critical question for researchers article, I address empirically and theoretically the practical and designers of new technologies is why some doing of ordinary, daily photography as it has moved from technologies are more readily used than others, and how film to digital. I describe findings from my own empirical people appropriate technologies to their own ends. work over several years with a wide range of people Digital personal photography is of interest in its own engaged in both film and digital photographic technologies, right, but also as a case study of a technology that has including camera-phones and online image-sharing. been smoothly incorporated into on-going practice. Current developments in digital image-related technologies are changing the publicness, temporality and volume of This paper addresses both empirically and theoretically personal photographic images. I describe personal the doing of ordinary, daily photography as it has moved photography as, in effect, multiple, overlapping from film to digital. I draw on my own empirical work technologies: of memory; relationships; self-representation; over several years with a wide range of people engaged in and self expression, all of which are changing in the digital both film and digital photography. I also draw on science environment. I draw on science and technology studies and technology studies (STS) to help understand the (STS) for help in understanding photography as an practices and multiple meanings of photographs and on-going practice of assemblage and performance, and the associated technologies, the transformations associated changes in photographic technologies as an opportunity to with the transition to digital technologies and how these see technology-in-the-making – the activities by which contribute to the continued popularity of both old and people are reproducing sociomaterial relations. In this view, new photographic technologies. photographs have agency as they ‘take the relay’ across space and time. With digital technology we see shifts in the assemblages of objects, practices and meanings that we call RESEARCH ON PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHY personal photography, some of which may be more welcome Understanding the actual ‘doing’ of photography is than others. In particular, personal photographs may be critical to this kind of investigation. Yet there remains a becoming more public and transitory, less private and relative lack of ethnographically informed research on durable and more effective as objects of communication people’s actual, daily practices of photography (Rose than of memory. 2004; Ruby 2005; Shove et al. 2007). Researchers have also noted a lack of theorising about personal INTRODUCTION photography (Cobley and Haeffner 2009). Photography has been extraordinarily successful as a Current empirical research on personal photography consumer technology since its introduction by Kodak in comes primarily from two areas: social science research the late nineteenth century. The shift to digital in visual communication, cultural studies and related technologies has, if anything, increased the use of and areas; and human–computer interaction (HCI). The 1 enthusiasm for photography. This widespread social science and cultural studies research is largely popularity has been a motivating factor in this research. concerned with the place of personal photography in What are people doing with digital images? Does this culture and society. The HCI literature largely addresses differ from what they used to do? And, most important issues related to technology design. of all: why is personal photography so very important to so many people? Why has the transition to digital been In a landmark study, Chalfen (1987) approached so easy? personal photography from a communication theory Nancy A. Van House is a Professor in the School of Information, University of California, Berkeley. Her research combines science and technology studies, human– computer interaction, to understand emerging current photographic practices and technologies, and the role of images in activity and interaction. ISSN 1472-586X printed/ISSN 1472-5878 online/11/020125-10 © 2011 International Visual Sociology Association DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2011.571888 126 N.A. Van House perspective. He asked: ‘What are people doing when they emotional and sensory impact beyond that of their make, appear in, or look at their own collections of content (Edwards 2002; Pink 2006). They carry physical personal pictures?’ (1). He went into people’s homes to traces of their social lives. Their meaning is constructed examine their photographic collections with them. He by their content but also by their archiving and display as described amateur photography as personal expression well as the stories told around and with them (Durrant and interpersonal communication, ‘the home mode of et al. 2008; Edwards 2002; Rose 2003, 2004; Shove et al. pictorial communication’ (2). 2007; Taylor, Swan, and Durrant 2007). Bourdieu (1996) and Bourdieu and Bourdieu (2004) The practices around digital photographic technologies studied photographic practices among French families to and their relationship to film photography are also of demonstrate his concept of habitus and his methods of interest in HCI research. Most HCI research is intended, connecting lived experience to social regularities. He explicitly or implicitly, to support the design of concluded that decisions about image content, technological systems for image storage, organisation, aesthetics, display and exchange reflect and reproduce retrieval, display and sharing. This research includes class. He argued that family photography ‘reinforc[es] qualitative, ethnographically informed investigations of the integration of the family group by reasserting the people’s real-life activities with both film and digital sense it has both of itself and its unity ...a ritual of the technologies, and the ways that they use new domestic cult’ (Bourdieu 1996, 19). Other occasions for technologies, including online sharing systems and photography, including tourism, were, to him, variants cameraphones (Ames et al. 2010; Frohlich et al. 2002; on its ‘archetypal function’ (35) of family photography. Kindberg et al. 2005; Kirk et al. 2006; Lindley et al. 2009; Rodden and Wood 2003; Taylor, Swan, and Recent research has continued this emphasis on practice, Durrant 2007; Whittaker, Bergman, and Clough 2010; social reproduction and families. Photographs have been Van House et al. 2005; Van House 2009). However, studied as everyday objects, in terms of their role in the Frohlich and Fennell (2007, 108) note in this literature ideology of families and codes of gender, class and an emphasis on people’s activities but a lack of attention power,andasanaspectofconsumerculture,leisureand to ‘what digital photography systems are about’. identity (Hirsch 1997; Holland 1991; Pauwels 2005, 2008; Rose 2003, 2004; Spence and Holland 1991; Slater 1995). Tourist photography overlaps with family SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES photography. The growth of personal photography and of tourism are closely related both in time and in In this paper I ask whether Science and Technology meaning (Sontag 1977; Urry 2002). Here, too, a Studies (STS) can help explain the popularity of both old practice-based perspective has been employed (Larsen and new photographic technologies and practices. A 2005; Haldrup and Larsen 2003; Garlick 2007). variety of theoretical perspectives on technology have been concerned with explaining why some technologies The emphasis on family photography and, to a lesser are adopted and others are not. STS approaches extent, tourist photography comes in part from the technologies as sociotechnical systems, on-going motivation to understand photography in relation to assemblages of diverse social and material elements. consumerism, households and everyday life. Another From the perspective of STS, what appear to be durable source of this emphasis, I suspect, is the evidence technologies are dynamic and unstable assemblages of available for empirical research in the age of film. A diverse social and material elements. The wide common method has been to go into homes (usually of acceptance of personal photography suggests a popular families), view albums and displayed images and and effective sociotechnical system, an assemblage of interview household members (Chalfen 1987; Rose 2003, technologies, objects, understandings whose multiple 2004; Taylor, Swan, and Durrant 2007). These archived meanings are important in a variety of human images, usually a highly selected subset of the images activity. made, were likely to be family and/or tourist photographs. STS is also deeply interesting in artefacts of all kinds: more than other social constructionist perspectives, it Photographs have both content and form; they are both attributes agency to non-humans, including images and material objects. Photographic prints and representations of all sorts. Photographs are