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Photographies
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A LIFE MORE PHOTOGRAPHIC
Daniel Rubinstein a; Katrina Sluis a
a Department of Arts Media and English, Faculty of Human Sciences, London South Bank University, London
SE1 0AA, UK

Online Publication Date: 01 March 2008

To cite this Article Rubinstein, Daniel and Sluis, Katrina(2008)'A LIFE MORE PHOTOGRAPHIC',Photographies,1:1,9 — 28

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17540760701785842

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Daniel Rubinstein

Katrina Sluis

A LIFE MORE PHOTOGRAPHIC

Mapping the networked image

Twenty-two years since the arrival of the first consumer digital camera, Western culture is
now characterized by ubiquitous photography. The disappearance of the camera inside the
mobile phone has ensured that even the most banal moments of the day can become a point of
photographic reverie, potentially shared instantly. Supported by the increased affordability
of computers, digital storage and access to broadband, consumers are provided with new
opportunities for the capture and transmission of images, particularly online where snapshot
photography is being transformed from an individual to a communal activity. As the digital
image proliferates online and becomes increasingly delivered via networks, numerous
practices emerge surrounding the image’s transmission, encoding, ordering and reception.
Informing these practices is a growing cultural shift towards a conception of the Internet as a
platform for sharing and collaboration, supported by a mosaic of technologies termed Web
2.0. In this article we attempt to delineate the field of snapshot photography as this practice
shifts from primarily being a print-oriented to a transmission-oriented, screen-based
experience. We observe how the alignment of the snapshot with the Internet results in the
emergence of new photographies in which the photographic image interacts with established
and experimental media forms – raising questions about the ways in which digital
photography is framed institutionally and theoretically.

Introduction

Recent changes in the production, distribution, consumption and storage of images
caused by the merging of photography with the Internet have had a notable effect on
varied and diverse social and cultural processes and institutions including medicine
(Pap, Lach, and Upton), journalism (Colin; Gillmor), law enforcement (Cascio),
tourism (Noah, Seitz, and Szeliski), space exploration (Lanzagorta) and fine art.

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In all

these areas digital imaging causes shifts in the way bodies are imagined and perceived,
wars are fought, people are monitored, works of art valorized and the public
informed of all of the above. Photography is now ingrained in so many processes that a
scholar of photography must also be highly informed about industries and institutions
that traditionally have had little to do with the study of photography. Conversely,
researchers in the fields of cultural anthropology (Okabe and Ito), informatics and
human–computer interaction (Van House et al.; Kindberg et al., ‘‘How and Why’’)
are increasingly concerned with the importance of digital photography to their fields
of study.

Photographies Vol. 1, No. 1, March 2008, pp. 9–28

ISSN 1754-0763 print/ISSN 1754-0771 online � 2008 Taylor & Francis
http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/17540760701785842

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In this article we choose to focus on only one area of photography, which we
consider to be key in understanding the shifts which are occurring in our perception of
the medium. Popular photography was, for several decades, the focus of studies by
cultural theorists and historians, curators and artists. But it is only with the
dissemination of personal photography online that ‘‘Kodak culture’’ (Chalfen 8–18),
augmented by ‘‘Nokia culture’’, became distributed and shared on a scale comparable
with news or commercial photography.

The distribution and sharing of snapshots online highlights a paradoxical condition
that characterizes snapshot photography: it is both ubiquitous and hidden. Since the
beginning of the twentieth century the snapshot has been the archetypal readymade
image: placeholder for memories, trophy of sightseeing, produced in their millions by
ordinary people to document the rituals of everyday life. And yet despite being the
most mass produced photographic product, the snapshot has remained highly private,
concealed from public eye, and quite often an invisible image. When snapshots do
appear in public, whether in the context of fine art exhibitions and publications or in
scientific journals, they are often presented as ‘‘found images’’ – stripped of notions
of authorship or details about the original purpose of the image, its subjects and the
circumstances of its creation. Even as the anonymous snapshot is used extensively as a
metaphor or a sign in works of fine art from Jeff Wall to Nan Goldin, from Christian
Boltanski to Gerhard Richter, these artists seem to be filling a gap left by the absence
of genuine, real-life snapshots in the public domain. Looked at as a genre, snapshot
photography seems to have many imitators but no recognized originals, many
admirers but no masterpieces, many iconoclasts but no icons.

Inverting this paradigm, the 2007 exhibition ‘‘We Are All Photographers Now!’’
at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland,

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responded to the way in which the

photography of ‘‘ordinary people’’ has achieved visibility and popularity, challenging
the way in which photography is framed and consumed. Photo-sharing and social
networking sites now provide a platform for photographers to deliver their images to
locations where millions can view them simultaneously. Being in the right place with
the right phone is now enough to make you a photojournalist, or give you access to
gallery wall space. Snapshots now appear not only in web-based family albums and
diaries but also literally cover the face of the Earth: augmented by geographic
coordinates they are superimposed onto screen-based online maps of the world.

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Photography is dead, long live photography

If one looks back at the brief history of digital photography it becomes very clear that
the issues that bothered critics and historians twenty years ago are significantly
different from the questions we may need to ask now. For many scholars, the most
pressing issues were those concerning the digital image’s ability to represent the Real
(Mitchell 23–57; Ritchin 36; Rosler 50–56). The malleability of digital photographs
was then seen by many as the central element of the digital revolution and caused
some to herald the ‘‘death of photography’’, shattering the privileged status of the
photograph as ‘‘objective’’ truth (for accounts of this period see Robins 29–50).

Instead, we now see that the power of the photograph to document is not
diminished due to digital technology. From CCTV stills, traffic control and

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monitoring systems, to photo-reportage, the digital image plays a major role as
‘‘evidence’’. The low-resolution, pixilated appearance of early camera phone
photographs and video clips is now an accepted part of the syntax of truthful and
authentic reportage in the same way that the grainy black and white photograph once
was. The speed with which these highly compressed JPEGs are transmitted and
amalgamated into news media is an indication of the acceptance of the explicitly
digital image into the structure of news reporting while emergent practices such as
citizen journalism and sousveillance (Mann, Fung, and Lo 177) rely on the instant
distribution that the networked camera facilitates.

A typical example of this shift is the camera phone image taken by Adam Stacey
on his way out of the underground on the morning of the 7/7 London bombings.

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Alongside other camera phone images, his picture rather than the photographs taken
later that day by photo-journalists became iconic of the incident. Significantly, the
picture that appeared on major news sites was a self-portrait of Stacey, one hand
covering his nose and mouth, with the tube carriage in the background. Here, the
camera phone provides the means of reporting from the perspective of the participant
in the event, the ergonomics of the telephone even allowing for easy inclusion of the
photographer in the picture. Compare that to the position of the photojournalist:
whose professional ethics dictate the position of the detached observer, assisted by the
adoption of bulky photographic equipment and long range lenses which create a
physical separation between subject and object.

The mass-amateurization of photography, and its renewed visibility online signals
a shift in the valorization of photographic culture. If, in the past, the arena of public
photography was dominated by professional practitioners, currently the work of
specialists is appearing side by side with images produced by individuals who don’t
have the same professional investment in photography.

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As a result, the roles of the

professional photographic image and that of a snapshot are changing.

The early years of digital photography

During the first years of the ‘‘digital revolution’’, digital technology was largely
inserted into the framework of existing traditional photographic practice. Through the
1990s the dominant shift was marked by replacing the technology of the analogue
photograph (film, chemical processing, darkroom practices) with the technology of
digital capture, and image manipulation. But these technological changes did not
radically alter the economy of production and storage of photographic images.

The arrival of digital imaging did not revolutionize popular photography but
caused gradual shifts in the habits of hobbyists and middle-class amateurs who bought
computers, scanners and ink-jet printers but used them within the old paradigms of
analogue photography. The photographic darkroom and the photo lab were replaced
by Photoshop and a colour printer. The ability to make prints without the need for a
home darkroom, and the ease with which old, faded prints could be improved or
restored convinced many photographers to swap the photo lab for domestic digital
set-up. But during the first stages of penetration of digital photography into the
amateur market (1990s) ‘‘going digital’’ was not about the acquisition of a digital

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camera – which was at that time an expensive tool beyond the reach of all but the
richest dilettantes. Instead, the flatbed scanner or the more specialized film scanner
became the central hardware of the digital ‘‘lightroom’’ as it provided a way of
digitizing film negatives and old prints, correcting and restoring them beyond what
was previously possible in the darkroom and printing them on inkjet paper which
mimicked photographic emulsion. The digital print was considered a compromise: not
as good as a darkroom print, but an acceptable surrogate. Here the print persisted.

Imaging software of that decade also simulated the tools and techniques of
photographic craft; Photoshop was the software of choice, with its array of familiar
darkroom tools for ‘‘dodging’’ and ‘‘burning’’, sharpening and blurring. Image
management software (Thumbs Up, ACDSee) employed the metaphor of a light-box
to display rows of images presented as a sheet of mounted transparencies.

Even when digital cameras became more affordable for the consumer market, the
promise of immediacy that digital photography offered was frustrated by unsuitable
methods for instant image sharing. Showing digital photographs to family and friends
relied on being physically gathered around a single computer’s screen – and relied on
the presence of a computer literate person to operate the software. Whilst sending
photographs by email was possible and indeed practised, there were significant barriers
to the uptake of this. Internet access in the 1990s was characterized by slow and
expensive modem connections, accompanied by the popular adoption of low-capacity
web-based email accounts. The practice of sending large attachments was quite risky,
potentially condemning the recipient to an overflowing mailbox or terminal boredom
whilst waiting for images to appear onscreen. Meanwhile, the publishing of images
online was either a complicated or costly process, usually requiring a website domain, a
hosting subscription, and a web designer or computer-savvy friend.

From print-based to screen-based photography

The advent of affordable, consumer-oriented digital cameras introduced amateur
photographers to several technological innovations which contributed to dramatic
changes in popular photographic practices. In 1995, the first digital consumer camera
with a screen made it possible to preview an image before it was taken (Tatsuno 36).
In addition to the screen, the digital camera also acquired a delete button, which
provided a way of erasing unwanted shots from memory. With these two innovations,
digital technology addressed the two significant barriers for engagement with
photography: the delay between taking a picture and viewing it,

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and the cost of each

exposed frame (Bourdieu 78).
From now on it became possible to engage with photography in a remarkably

different way. The ability to take a picture, look at the screen, readjust the
composition and correct the camera settings until the image is perfect created an
environment of accelerated learning which gave amateurs the tools to compete with
professionals. In the world of still film cameras, years of training were required to
mentally transform a 3D view into a 2D plane, and translate light and colour into
photographic (greyscale or colour) values in order to visualize the scene the way it
would look in print. Ansel Adams famously attributed great importance to this skill:

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I can not overemphasize the importance of continuous practice in visualization,
both in terms of image values […] and image management […]. We must learn
to see intuitively as the lens/camera sees and to understand how the negative and
printing papers will respond. It is a stimulating process and one with great
creative potential.

(Adams 7; our emphasis)

The little screen at the back of a digital camera made it possible to see intuitively as the
lens/camera sees without years of training, dramatically narrowing the gap between the
professional photographer and the amateur.

The ability to delete an image immediately after it was taken has intriguing
consequences for the kinds of photographs that are left after the ‘‘on-the-fly’’ editing.
Whatever seems imperfect, unflattering, or meaningless at the time the picture was
made is now in danger of being deleted immediately in order to free some space in the
camera memory for future, presumably better, photo opportunities. The delete
button promises a set of selected and more perfect images while at the same time
threatening a death blow to the traditional role of the photograph as memento and
keepsake. The ability to edit in camera means that pictures that are deemed
unsuccessful disappear for ever, thus eliminating the possibility of returning to them
after months or years to discover redeeming qualities that compensate for their
apparent imperfections. The delete button reduces the chances of discovering hidden
truth in photographs: a blurred face that becomes a poignant representation of absence
and loss; a bad expression that turns into a cherished quality; closed eyes that reflect
the proximity of death; a stranger in the background that becomes a lover or a friend.

Today, the overwhelming majority of personal photographs are destined never to
appear on paper. As computer processing power has increased exponentially, and as
the price of storage has dropped, the ability to accumulate tens of thousands of images
has become a reality for the vernacular photographer. For the accidental archivist, the
familiar trope of the dusty shoebox stuffed full of neglected prints gathering dust has
been reinvented as the hard disk cluttered by files. In 2005 one Internet survey stated
that 11 per cent of respondents had more than 10,000 digital photos, whilst the
largest group (27 per cent) had between 1,001 and 5,000 digital photos (‘‘Do You
Have 10,000 Digital Photos?’’). Traditional models of handling photography had no
way of coping with such dramatic increase in volume of photographic production.

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As the photographic print becomes an unwieldy vehicle for sharing this image
explosion the snapshot is now commonly viewed via the screen of the camera, mobile
phone or computer. As Daisuke Okabe has noted, currently the most fluid and
immediate sharing of images happens when images are shared directly via the camera’s
screen (2, 9). In recent years, the camera screen has grown in size from an electronic
viewfinder into a portable viewing frame, designed not only to compose and review
but to view, edit and share photographs without resorting to computers

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or photo-

labs
9

(see figure 1). Some consumer cameras now have screens which mimic the scale
of a small photographic print, colonizing the entire back side of the camera, replacing
the camera controls with a responsive touch screen (e.g. the seductive, shiny screen
has also become a marketing tool for the camera; product shots frequently highlight
the back, rather then the front of the camera, drawing attention to a large screen with

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a bright picture on it. A similar development can be observed in the way in which the
design of higher end camera phones and some PDAs almost eliminate the keypad, and
therefore sacrifice some of the functionality, in order to maximize the screen.

The emergence of the digital lifestyle

As our viewing practices shift towards the screen, the photograph appears within the
same space as other digitized information and entertainment. Christian Metz, in
‘‘Photography and Fetish’’, points out the difference between a (traditional) still
photograph and a movie film in terms of its ‘‘socialised unit of reading’’ or lexis
(155). He goes on to observe that ‘‘… the photographic lexis, a silent rectangle of
paper, is much smaller than the cinematic lexis’’ (155). But viewed on the computer
screen, the amateur/family photograph occupies the same space as the video game,
the film trailer, the newspaper and the artwork in a virtual museum. It becomes part
of an endless stream of data, disassociated from the origins of the snapshot in the
personal, the ostensibly real, and private life.

In 2005, Photobucket was registering 1.3 million images being uploaded to its
servers each day, which were then being replicated to over 500,000 other websites
(‘‘Fun Statistics’’). Flickr recorded its 100 millionth photo upload in 2006 (Champ).
Here, we observe a transformation similar in magnitude to the one that John Tagg
describes in The Burden of Representation, when the invention of halftone plates in the
1880s ‘‘enabled the economical and limitless reproduction of photographs’’ (55–56).
The ease with which images replicate and transmit across telecommunications
networks modifies the economies of photographic images just as drastically.

FIGURE 1 Camera screen image. Reproduced with permission of e-Photographia.com.

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Intriguingly, there are protracted similarities between the present digital
photography revolution and the events that shaped amateur photography at the turn
of the nineteenth century. As John Tagg points out, all the technological innovations
of George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, would have amounted to little if he had
not thought to re-brand photography in a way which made it appealing to ‘‘a whole
stratum of people who had never before taken a photograph’’(54). Similarly, the
technological innovations that made storing limitless numbers of images possible on
cheap hard disks and memory cards, and fast and economical distribution of
photographs through a high-speed Internet connection, would not have amounted to a
restructuring of the place of photography in society if they had not been augmented by
a shift in the marketing of computers. At the axis of this second digital revolution in
photography

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was the re-branding of the home computer as the centre of ‘‘digital

lifestyle’’. Championed by both Microsoft (‘‘Microsoft Digital Lifestyle’’) and Apple
(Redman), this concept aims to situate the computer at the heart of family life,
replacing the television and the sound system, the coffee table,

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the phone, the

family album and the slide projector. Part of this re-branding exercise earmarked
photography, together with music and video, as central to the ‘‘fun’’ things that the
computer can do.

As part of the ‘‘digital lifestyle’’, a new generation of consumer photographic
tools (iPhoto, Picasa) avoids references to the darkroom and to the photographic skills
and practices of old. Gone are the metaphors of the light-box and the filing cabinet;
replaced instead by features more common to video software. Now, one is able to
‘‘scroll through’’ long sequences of photographs by navigating a timeline: as you
navigate, the images flicker one after another. A whole year’s worth of pictures can
flash in front of your eyes in a matter of seconds. When Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO,
unveiled the first version of iPhoto in 2001, he referred to the ‘‘chain of pain’’
involved in downloading photographs from the camera to the computer (Steinberg 1).
In contrast with the past, Apple’s new software was offering a ‘‘zero configuration’’
environment for photography in which the camera model was recognized
automatically, images stored according to date and time, and photos were ‘‘shared’’
as slideshows, photo books and webpages. The new breed of photographic
applications did not emphasize the manipulation and the editing of images: these
were activities requiring time to learn and execute; and made almost unnecessary due
to the very high ‘‘success rate’’ of compact digital cameras. By discretely eliminating
references to craftsmanship and specialist knowledge from digital photography
software, photography is incorporated into the suite of friendly multimedia
applications designed to appeal to every computer user.

This re-branding of photography occurred in tandem with a revolution in mobile
telecommunications. The disappearance of the camera inside the telephone bonded
photography to the most important device of personal communications that ever
existed – the mobile phone. As Kristóf Nyı́ri observes:

Combining the option of voice calls with text messaging, MMS, as well as e-mail,
and on its way to becoming the natural interface through which to conduct
shopping, banking, booking flights, and checking in, the mobile phone is
obviously turning into the single unique instrument of mediated communication,

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mediating not just between people, but also between people and institutions, and
indeed between people and the world of inanimate objects.

(Nyı́ri 2)

In the light of Nyı́ri’s observations, it is not surprising that the influence of the camera
phone on contemporary culture is the subject of extensive research by scholars in the
field of human–computer interaction (HCI). Such studies respond to the demand of
telecommunications conglomerates to know more about social uses of mobile
photography with the view of developing additional services that will further deepen
the bond between consumers and their phones (see, for example, Van House et al.;
Kindberg et al., ‘‘How and Why’’). Based mostly on the analysis of focus groups,
these studies look at the things people ‘‘do’’ with their camera phones. Given the
methodology, it comes as no surprise that most findings indicate that the main uses of
camera phone photography are highly social. In the now celebrated analysis by Van
House et al., ‘‘The Uses of Personal Networked Digital Imaging: An Empirical Study
of Cameraphone Photos and Sharing’’, the four main uses of camera phone
photography are creating and maintaining social relationships, constructing personal
and group memory, self-presentation, and self-expression (1845).

What people do with photographs after they are taken is also the subject of acute
attention. The emerging field of personal information management (PIM) addresses
the personal photographic archive as another form of data which needs to be
understood, managed and retrieved more efficiently. Rodden and Wood (409) have
observed the ways in which pictures are stored, annotated, sent, shared and archived.
Elsewhere, algorithms are being developed in order to assist in the creation of image
collections which archive themselves (Naaman et al. 180–81). Surveying this growing
literature on camera phones and photo sharing it becomes quite clear that the field is
dominated by research that is not troubled by questions concerning the role of
representation or the power structures which surround photography. Whilst
references to the canon of critical writing on photography may appear in the
occasional footnote, it is still remarkable that the new wave of works on photography
(see, for example, Van House et al.; Van House and Davis; Okabe and Ito; Kindberg
et al.) can do without the persistent questions about representation that fascinated
writers on photography for decades.

Before we lament the indifference of these researchers to the theories of
photography, it is worth remembering that the photograph that occupied the mind of
Barthes is a different object to the photograph that Okabe, Van House and Kindberg
write about. Where Barthes was turning the rustling pages of his family album, Okabe
observes a formation of pixels on a 262 inch screen of a telephone. Where Sekula
interprets the significance of the strips of light and dark in Stieglitz’s fine print, Van
House deals with an image that becomes illegible binary data at the press of a button.

As image data become a viable substitute for the printed snapshot, we see the
material structures which supported the storage and display of personal photography
(shoebox, album, photo frame) being sustained by range of different practices and
forms. For an increasing number of consumers, the archival and sharing practices
which surrounded the print are now provided via the transmission of photographs to
networked locations. Through the relocation of the image collection online,

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consumers are able to mitigate data anxiety by outsourcing backing-up responsibilities
to the companies which maintain the massive server farms which host the images
(‘‘The Downside of Digital Snaps’’). Significantly, whether located online or
contained on a home PC, the digital snapshot collection now takes the form of a
database. Borrowing Manovich’s definition, ‘‘they appear as collections of items on
which the user can perform various operations – view, navigate, search’’ (Language of
New Media 219). With the emergence of the photo-sharing platform, the photographs
of millions of individuals are now contained within online databases connected to each
other by hyperlink, tag, or search term. Within this context, the consumption of
personal photography has become intimately linked with the software interfaces which
mediate their display on-screen.

The social life of the networked image

The popularity of photo sharing needs to be considered alongside the processes that
shape the World Wide Web, particularly in recent years where notions of
‘‘community’’, ‘‘social’’, friend’’, ‘‘free’’ (as in free account) and ‘‘fun’’ are being
reshaped through the rise of social networking and Web 2.0. Whilst often put forth as
a problematic and controversial term, Web 2.0 was first coined in 2004 to describe
shifts in the way in which ‘‘software developers and end users use the web as a
platform’’ (O’Reilly). Instead of providing an interface for the navigation and display
of interlinked documents, commentators observed that successful websites were
appearing which mimicked the functionality and interactive possibilities more
commonly found in desktop software applications. In terms of photography, it
suddenly became possible to modify content online without programming skills; one
could upload, rotate, annotate, distribute and organize images by interacting directly
with the webpage itself. Whilst in the 1990s photo-sharing sites simply functioned as
add-ons for online print finishing services, the new generation of sites such as
SmugMug, Buzznet, Zoto, and Flickr (launched in 2004) functioned as interfaces
which facilitated a playful engagement with one’s own snapshots and those uploaded
by others.

The photo-sharing platform, like the software that supports blogging, makes the
process of updating one’s page simple and intuitive. However, unlike a blog, photo
sharing does not require the labour of writing entries on a regular basis, and it does
not demand continual activity in the way that a social networking site does, and yet
photo sharing offers to its members many of the benefits of blogging and social
networking. As such, photo sharing provides a flexible model of participation which
allows for regular updates in the form of online photo journals, but also
accommodates users who only want to upload a few images as a permanent photo
gallery or those who use photo sharing as a backup solution for the image collection
on their PC. At the same time, a major appeal of photo sharing is the ability to
connect with others not through writing but by posting images.

Van House notes in her study of Flickr users that many have given up blogging
because it is ‘‘too much work’’ and now favour the photograph as a more convenient
way of sharing their experiences (2720). The practices of moblogging (blogging with a
mobile phone) and photoblogging (blogging with photographs rather then text)

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further exploit the way in which mobile phone images have become a kind of visual
speech – an immediate, intimate form of communication that replaces writing.

The networking of the snapshot provides something which vernacular
photographers have always lacked: a broad audience. Don Slater has noted how
marginalized the practice of looking at as opposed to taking snapshots has been, quoting
a 1982 survey which stated that 60 per cent of respondents and their families looked
at their family snaps once a year or less (Slater 138). Single images, uploaded to a
photo-sharing site can accumulate thousands of viewings and long strings of
comments. Whilst an invitation to someone else’s ‘‘slide night’’ of holiday snaps has
been something to be avoided at all costs, the photo-sharing environment encourages
a prolonged engagement with the image, where the act of viewing other people’s
images online becomes a form of leisure and a social activity. Writing in 1995, Slater
noted the way in which ‘‘actively using domestic photographs as opposed to taking
them … is marginal because it is not structured into a leisure event’’ (140). Within a
photo-sharing platform, the viewing of photographs is now constructed as a creative
pursuit, involving remixing, captioning and commenting upon images. At the same
time, traditions of collecting, archiving, and scrapbooking have become re-branded as
the marketing buzzword ‘‘life caching’’: a consumer ‘‘mega trend’’ coined by
Trendwatching.com (‘‘Life Caching: An Emerging Consumer Trend’’). Consumers,
or ‘‘anyone with even a tiny amount of creative talent’’, are also now re-branded as
members of a ‘‘Generation C’’, for whom the production and manipulation of digital
media ‘‘Content’’ is both ‘‘Creative’’ and inseparable from the consumption of digital
storage, media players, and camera phones (‘‘Generation C: An Emerging Trend and
New Business Opportunity’’).

The photo-sharing interface provides a range of built-in features designed to make
the viewing of photographs into a concrete, traceable activity, which is a source of
anticipation each time a user logs on to their account. Within Flickr, Jean Burgess
suggests that these interface features reward users for participation:

At the most basic level, each action of uploading an image contains a potential
reward – there is always the possibility that someone will view and enjoy it; the
reward is delivered in material form if another user leaves a comment or marks
the image as a favourite.

(Burgess 140)

Viewer involvement can extend from leaving a comment at the bottom of the page to
attaching notes to specific areas of the image, thereby making viewing into a creative
activity that has the potential to support or subvert the intentions of the photographer.
The face of the photograph can become a site of struggle between interpretations by
various users, while at the same time generating layers of text that can be software
read and used as a resource in search algorithms.

12

The visibility of the networked image

A quick visit to the Flickr homepage reveals that over 3,000 images have been
uploaded in the last minute.

13
Within this avalanche of images, the practice of tagging

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one’s photos acts as a strategy for preventing them from disappearing from view.
Tagging systems are a central feature of photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and
SmugMug which promote the community features of their interfaces. The practice of
tagging involves the addition of freely chosen words to an image – resulting in a
bottom-up subjective categorization system known as a folksonomy. In a photo-sharing
context, tagging serves a dual function of helping to classify a personal collection of
images, and making the images available to search enquiries within the photo-sharing
site. As such, tagging is both a part of personal image management and at the centre of
the social aspects of photo sharing.

Within the Flickr environment, the practice of tagging is linked to the popularity
and visibility of the image. Images which are highly ranked in search results may have
been tagged with up to seventy-five keywords (the maximum allowed) through which
they have attracted hundreds of hits and numerous comments. Within photo sharing,
the practice of tagging becomes part of a strategy for self-promotion that allows the
individual to rise above the anonymity of most users.

The reliance on tagging for organization and retrieval of images is an indication of
the importance of textuality for online photographic procedures. Photo sharing is
therefore not just a portal for photographs but an amalgamation of mutually dependent
visual and textual practices. Matt Locke has observed that annotation ‘‘creates a kind of
intimacy around the photograph, capturing some of the ‘murmur of laughing voices’
that surrounded their creation’’ (391). Tagging, commenting, titling and annotating of
images are essential elements of participation in the social aspects of photo sharing which
play a role in creating communities of users interested in specific images.

Tagging provides a substantially different way of viewing and interacting with
personal photography. Batchen states ‘‘… when we … touch an album and turn its
pages, we put the photograph in motion, literally in an arc through space and
metaphorically in a sequential narrative’’ (49). As a form of new media, the
hyperlinked image enables the possibility of non-linear navigation, creating an
environment where images can be connected and displayed according to an array of
different categories. Significantly, as a tag is actually a hyperlink created by the user,
tagging systems resemble more closely Vannevar Bush’s conception of the Memex –
where user-created links form loose trails between different documents (Johnson
121). Within Flickr, the simple addition of the tag ‘‘cat’’ to an image immediately
connects the image to 100,000 photos of other cats, which can be called to the screen
with a single click (see figure 2). In this respect, tagging subverts any attempt to
impose narrative order on the snapshot collection, and calls into question a snapshot’s
specificity or individual mark of identity. As a process it acts to join images together as
communal pools of tourist snaps, sunsets and babies.

Tagging is one system which rewards users by providing a tool for search and
retrieval of photographs, while at the same time making large collections of
photographs legible to other software. Tagging is crucial in helping computers to
make meaningful selections of images that relate to its content or emotional
significance. This stands in contrast to mechanically captured metadata: information
which has been added by the camera concerning the technical context of the image
(e.g. camera make, exposure). By assigning tags to their images, users are in essence
describing their photographs in a way that the computer can understand.

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The inability of computers to interpret pixel information in a way which would
allow automatic cataloguing of photographs forces computer scientists to develop
systems in which humans assist computers in ‘‘seeing’’ photographs. One example of
such ‘‘human–computer’’ collaboration is a ‘‘Google Image Labeler’’

14
– an online

game in which players score points while labelling elements of photographs presented
to them by the software. Despite the fact that the only reward for the human players
is the score they accumulate against others, the game is so addictive that it was
estimated that it will take Google only several months to catalogue all the images on
its servers (von Ahn and Dabbish 319).

As a means for giving machines the ability to interpret an image, metadata
provides ‘‘a new paradigm to ‘interface reality’’’ (Manovich, ‘‘Metadata’’), providing
a means for the image to escape its original context. Stripped of their interfaces,
photo-sharing sites function as vast databases of indexed photographs which can be
remixed and remapped online as mashups. Hackers and programmers interested in
new ways of navigating and visualizing images now create alternative interfaces which
pull together images with maps, texts, ratings, newsfeeds and other content online. In
this new context, the currency of the snapshot ceases to lie in its narrative or
mnemonic value, in its indexicality, or in its status as a precious object. Instead, these

FIGURE 2 Flickr screenshot. Reproduced with permission of Yahoo! Inc. � 2007 by Yahoo! Inc.

YAHOO! and the YAHOO! logo are trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. Image credit: Annabel Blair.

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practices illustrate the way in which the networked image is data, that is: visual
information to be analysed and remapped to new contexts via algorithms. With the
mashup tools provided by ‘‘Yahoo! Pipes’’ it becomes possible to ‘‘read’’ ‘‘The
Guardian’’ as a sequence of images pulled from Flickr. In this example, a news feed
will undergo automated content analysis, a sequence of keywords will be generated,
which are then used to pull out images via a tag search from Flickr (‘‘Guardian’s
Newsblog thru Flickr’’).

I am the camera

The mass appeal of the camera phone as a platform for digital photography (Nyı́ri 1)
could be partly explained by the promise to fulfil a desire for unmediated
photography; photography that takes place without the intervention of the camera. As
Erkki Huhtamo observes, photography was the first mass media that was susceptible
to miniaturization; an inventory of nineteenth-century photographic apparatus
includes bow tie cameras, bowler hat and walking stick cameras and suitcase and book
cameras. In the twentieth century, subminiature cameras found their way into finger
rings, pocket watches, mechanical pencils and pens (Huhtamo 1). Beyond addressing
the voyeuristic urge to be able to photograph without being noticed, these devices
indicate a wish for photography with everyday objects instead of a camera, and
prefigure contemporary developments in the field of wearable electronics. This desire
is motivated not only by the wish to make the act of photography invisible and mobile
but also by the fantasy of blurring the boundaries between the act of living and the act
of taking photographs. While examining photoblogging practices, Cohen identifies the
yearning for photography without photography during an interview with a
photoblogger called Ed, who expresses the wish to ‘‘… go around recording, taking
pictures by [pause] blinking …’’ (891). Cohen goes on to explain that Ed’s desire is to
‘‘augment his body with the means to generate photographs as he lives; remove
duration from the process of taking a photograph; remove the need to reach out and
grasp a separate physical device in order to fix the image’’ (892).

A camera inside a telephone seems like something that might have appeared in a
Victorian catalogue of detective cameras – minute, invisible and much more convenient
to operate discretely then a camera concealed in a bowler hat. Eliminating the camera
from the practice of photography removed a barrier to spontaneous image capture,
allowing anyone with a telephone to participate in the documentation of their immediate
environment. The ability to take photographs without becoming a photographer is
appealing not only because it makes photography less technological but also because with
the absence of the camera the photographer does not become an observer but remains
intimately connected to the subject of photography. At the same time, the act of wearing
a camera at all times opens up a different relationship to space, turning everything in
one’s immediate environment into a potential subject for a snapshot.

Digital image abundance

Whilst the traditional album provides a discrete framework for displaying a limited
selection of images, photo-sharing websites exist as spheres of image abundance.

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Accordingly, we see our attention shift from the singular photographic image to image
sequences: the image ‘‘pool’’, the ‘‘slideshow’’, the ‘‘photostream’’, the image
‘‘feed’’. At the same time, images from camera phones and digital cameras are not
‘‘frozen moments in time’’ in the way photographs used to be understood. A recent
offering from one of the leading camera manufacturers is a 6 mega pixel camera that
captures sixty full resolution frames per second (‘‘Casio Developing 300 fps CMOS
Based Camera’’); one can only wonder what is the meaning of the ‘‘decisive
moment’’ in these circumstances and what is the difference between photography and
video (beyond the fact that photography now has more frames per second). But even
if the technological gadgetry does not seduce us, we are still left with an endless
number of images available from photo-sharing websites. This inexhaustible stream
makes it difficult to develop an intimate relationship with a single image. The
assurance of infinite scopic pleasure online encourages a restless, continual search in
which the present image, exciting as it is, is only a cover for the next, potentially
more promising and thrilling. Caterina Fake, Flickr’s founder, argues that ‘‘the nature
of photography now is it’s in motion … It doesn’t stop time anymore, and maybe
that’s a loss. But there’s a kind of beauty to that, too’’ (Harmon).

The possibility of snapshot photography not as composed of static, physical
objects but as something more akin to live transmission is also seen in the emergence
of screen-based electronic photo frames. The digital photo frame mimics the
traditional photo frame, but replaces the print with a flat screen, displaying a constant
stream of digital images within a familiar 86100 proportion. Recent models are
marketed for their ability to integrate wirelessly with photo-sharing sites, using RSS to
suck down image sequences directly to the mantelpiece. Here, personal photography
is imagined as an image ‘‘feed’’: the image is presented as a shifting sequence, able to
dynamically update itself within the frame as new images are posted by the user
online.

Return of the anonymous snapshot

Within this flow of images the value of a single photograph is being diminished and
replaced by the notion of a stream of data in which both images and their significances
are in a state of flux. Disassociated from its origins, identified only by semantic tags
and placed in a pool with other images that share similar metadata, the snapshot’s
resonance is dependent on the interface which mediates our encounter with it. Corby
and Baily (referring to earlier work by Johnson), explain:

While often presented as some form of untainted fact, statistical visualizations,
database interfaces, etc., act as both a membrane for access, and a culturally
organized surface that formulates perception of underlying data and informational
structures. Simply put, there is no natural connection between the data and its
representational form, other than the fact it is digital material.

(Corby and Baily 113)

Stripped of its original context, the personal photograph appears to be ‘‘authorless’’
and can function as a highly versatile vessel for ideological narratives from news

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reports to fine art installations to programming experiments. The lack of significance
represented by the authorless snapshot now has more to do with its belonging to a
class of images that share similar metadata than it does to photography’s intrinsic
polysemy. Put another way, transmitted over networks, the snapshot image signifies
an absence of meaning; it is the ambient visual background against which visual
narratives are told, distributed and consumed.

The work of Paul Frosh (concerned with the online image banks through which
stock advertising photographs are now accessed) is significant in this context because
he develops a model of analysis for images which are intentionally made to be unseen.
In ‘‘Rhetorics of the Overlooked’’ his analysis is focused on the generic images of
‘‘smiling, white middle-class families at the beach, well-groomed businessmen shaking
hands, romantic young couples kissing’’ (175) manufactured by the stock photography
industry, which he contrasts with the attention-seeking, highly visible and dramatic
advertising images which attract most consumer and critical attention. As Frosh puts
it:

… I hope to resurrect the significance of the ordinary, the unremarkable and the
overlooked in our understanding of how many (if not most) advertising images
communicate, and to replace the isolated object of the consumer-critic’s specular
interest with an unremarkable but enveloping visual environment.

(Frosh 173)

The distinction Frosh makes between the ‘‘isolated object’’ and the ‘‘visual
environment’’ when talking about stock photography has clear implications for the
way networked vernacular photography can be understood as ocular ‘‘white noise’’:
‘‘Stock photography … emits the ‘background noise’ of consumer cultures: vast
numbers of similar images which are repeatedly produced and preformed as ordinarily
familiar and ordinarily desirable’’ (191).

Similarly, the networked snapshot is overlooked not simply because it is bland,
banal and repetitious but also because it is a non-object. And it is not just in the sense
in which photographs always had an insecure presence as an object through their role
as signifiers that we tend to look through rather than look at. Within online networks
the individual snapshot is stripped of the fragile aura of the photographic object as it
becomes absorbed into a steam of visual data. By giving up the attributes of a
photograph as a unique, singular and intentional presence, the networked snapshot is
becoming difficult to comprehend with the conceptual tools of visual literacy and
photographic theory. The comparative silence of photographic theorists in regard to
vernacular photography online could, in part, be due to this.

By taking on the appearance of a snapshot, the networked image is camouflaged as
a non-political, non-significant and non-ideological site that does not merit textual
analysis. This is perhaps a source of the persistence and power of the networked
image. Invisibility, of course, is not without its benefits; not only does it help to evade
analysis, criticism and deconstruction that are the fate of the louder, more visible
images, but through being unnoticed, vernacular images appear normative, all-
encompassing, and inherently benign. In their capacity as readymade, mass produced
and slightly silly, the snapshot perpetuates the notion of the world going about its

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business in a natural way. The practice of tagging, which results in millions of images
identified with ‘‘holiday’’, ‘‘party’’, ‘‘wedding’’, ‘‘family’’ reinforces a sense of
identity and unity which overwhelms differences and distinctions. They advance a
sense of uniformed, global satisfaction with the way things are without being called to
account for their lyrical promotion of ‘‘universal human nature’’ (Barthes, Mythologies
101). The self-image of the deprived, the cut-off, the bombed out, does not exist
online because the rhetoric of personal photography is anchored in a sense of
individual and social identity and the pathos of control over the means of image
making. Within the context of the networked snapshot, this means access to the
Internet, to electricity and to mobile telephone networks.

The great talent of the online snapshot is to make specific historical conditions
appear natural and universal. What Paul Frosh says about the stock image rings true
about the vernacular photograph too: ‘‘it erases indexical singularity, the uniqueness
of the instance, in favor of uniformity and recurrence – the systematic iconic
repetition of staged image types’’ (189). Through the semantic mechanisms of tagging
and metadata, the specificity of each online snapshot is obliterated by the way in which
a single hyperlinked keyword can group together thousands of disparate images. Can
4,150,058 photographs tagged with ‘‘party’’ be wrong?

Notes

1 Members of the public were invited to contribute to the exhibition ‘‘How We Are
Now: Photographing Britain’’ at Tate Britain, London, UK, 22 May–2 September
2007, by submitting photographs to a Flickr group, <http://www.tate.org.uk/
britain/exhibitions/howweare/slideshow.shtm>.

2 ‘‘We Are All Photographers Now!’’, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, 8
February–20 May 2007. <http://www.allphotographersnow.ch/>.

3 See examples at the Panoramio website <http://www.panoramio.com >; Flickr’s
image map <http://www.flickr.com/map >; and Woophy <http://www.woo-
phy.com>.

4 See the image in its original context, posted by Alfie Dennen to his blog at Stacey’s
request: <http://moblog.co.uk/view.php?id577571>.

5 In studies by Van House et al. (‘‘The Uses of Personal Networked Digital
Imaging’’ 1856) and Okabe and Ito it is suggested that the camera phone has
enabled the freedom to explore new paradigms of visual storytelling and personal
expression.

6 Roland Barthes sums up this sentiment in Camera Lucida: ‘‘I am not a
photographer, not even an amateur photographer: too impatient for that: I must
see right away what I have produced[.]’’ (9).

7 Only a generation ago the average number of photographs taken by a family during
one year is estimated to have been three to four rolls of film (King 9; Chalfen 14).

8 At the same time, the marketing of recent camera phones suggests that the mobile
phone is now being re-constructed as a mobile multimedia computer. The latest
phones from Nokia are described in promotional literature as ‘‘multi-media
devices’’ and elsewhere as ‘‘multi-media computers’’ (‘‘Nokia Introduces the
Next Story in Video with the Nokia N93’’).

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9 For an evaluation of on-camera sharing practices, see E. Salwen, ‘‘Beyond
Chimping’’, AfterCapture Magazine June/July 2007. 4 Aug. 2007. <http://
www.aftercapture.com/print-archives/564/beyond-chimping>.

10 In this respect 2004 perhaps marks the beginning of this shift: it was a year of
massive growth for digital cameras, as was the year in which sales of camera
phones outstripped sales of digital cameras (which outsold film cameras)
(Raymond). In the same year, the term Web 2.0 was coined (O’Reilly), and
Google revolutionized online storage with the introduction of 1GB email accounts.

11 See Microsoft’s multimedia coffee table covered in Popular Mechanics: <http://
www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html>.

12 Compare Flickr’s ‘‘interestingness’’, a ranking algorithm for seeking out the ‘‘best’’
images on their servers: <http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/>.

13 Flickr website: <http://www.flickr.com> (accessed 16 Oct. 2007, 5:15 p.m.).
14 To play Google Image Labeler, visit <http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/>.

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Daniel Rubinstein is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arts, Media and English

at London South Bank University where he directs a BA in Digital Photography.

Previously he studied history at Tel-Aviv University and photography at London College

of Printing and has written about camera phone photography. Currently he is working

on a PhD thesis concerned with the relationship between photography, philosophy and

culture. Address: Department of Arts Media and English, Faculty of Human Sciences,

London South Bank University, Borough Road, London SE1 0AA, UK. [email:

rubinsd@lsbu.ac.uk]

Katrina Sluis is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arts, Media and English at

London South Bank University where she co-ordinates the BA (Hons) Digital Media

Arts. Her teaching and scholarly interests include cultures of mobile multimedia,

critical theory and digital art. As a practising artist, she works with painting,

photography and digital media to explore materiality, archiving and transmission in

relation to the photographic image. Address: Department of Arts Media and English,

Faculty of Human Sciences, London South Bank University, Borough Road, London SE1

0AA, UK. [email: sluiskp@lsbu.ac.uk]

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