In a meeting about my project, a professor told me: "there´s no reason that a digital camera have to look as a camera anymore"


 1 

Cite as: 

Cruz, E.G., and Meyer, E.T. (2012). Creation and Control in the Photographic Process: iPhones and 

the emerging fifth moment of photography. Photographies 5(2): 203-221. 

doi:10.1080/17540763.2012.702123 

 

Creation and Control in the Photographic Process: iPhones and the emerging fifth moment of 

photography  

 

Edgar Gómez Cruz.  

Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya 

Eric T. Meyer.  

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford 

 

Edgar Gómez Cruz is a researcher of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Universitat 

Oberta de Catalunya. His research has been in Computer Mediated Communication and he has 

published two books and several papers on the theme. He has recently finished his doctoral 

dissertation, which is an ethnography of digital photography practices, and also has written papers 

and presented at conferences on various aspects of digital photography.  
Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) 

Parc Mediterrani de la Tecnologia 

Av. Canal Olímpic s/n, Edifici B3 

08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona) Spain 

egomezcr@uoc.edu 

 

Dr. Eric T. Meyer is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of 

Oxford. His research includes the impact of research technologies on research performance, on the 

social impact of ICTs, and participation by Internet users in creating content and blurring 

boundaries between amateur and professional content creators. Meyer’s PhD in Information Science 

from Indiana University in 2007, which was named the 2008 ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation of the 

Year, examined how marine biologists who rely on photographic evidence to identify individual 

marine mammals have seen significant changes in their everyday work practices as they switched 

from film photography to digital photography. He has also written papers and presented at 

conferences on various aspects of digital photography from a social informatics perspective. 
Oxford Internet Institute 

University of Oxford 

1 St Giles 

Oxford 

OX1 3JS    Phone: +44 (0) 1865 287218 

United Kingdom   Fax: +44 (0) 1865 287211 
eric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.uk   

mailto:egomezcr@uoc.edu
mailto:eric.meyer@oii.ox.ac.uk


 2 

Introduction 

In a 2009 issue of the mainstream photography enthusiast magazine American Photo, an article 

entitled “Instant gratification” (Andrews and Chen) reported on interviews with four professional 

photographers. The article centered on a single photographic device, and it was not a camera: the 

iPhone. More recently, Annie Liebovitz, in a November 15, 2011 interview on MSNBC, called the 

iPhone ‘the snapshot camera of today’. While these anecdotes do not by themselves indicate a 

trend, they are just two examples of the growing interest of mainstream photographers in new 

devices for image capture, and in particular the iPhone, which represent technology convergence 

and ubiquity. In this article, we propose that the iPhone is actually more than a single device within 

which multiple technologies (including phones, cameras, geo-location, and Internet browsing, 

among others) have converged, but is also a node of different networks that is shaping new 

understandings of what photography is and how it is used. The iPhone represents one of the latest 

developments in a long history of image creation devices, but is the first device that combines three 

important elements which we will discuss: the making, processing, and distribution of images. It is 

not the first attempt to converge elements of the image creation process, such as the once-popular 

but now discontinued Polaroid cameras (see Buse “Polaroid into Digital” and “Surely Fades 

Away”) that combined the making and processing elements (but generally without the possibility of 

adjusting the processing) and later digital cameras that could be connected directly to home printers 

without the intervention of a computer, but it is the first to combine all three elements in a way that 

is having widespread success. 

 

Although photography has a long and well-documented history, more than 180 years after the first 

photographic image was made, “we still do not know what photography is” (Kember 175). One 

might ask how this can be true, when nearly everyone in the developed world and many in the 

developing world have created photographs; furthermore, most lay photographers would likely 

argue that they know exactly what photography is: a technological means for recording the world as 

seen. However, Kember’s provocative point is true in many ways because photography “is a 

complex technological network in the making rather than a single fixed technology” (Larsen 142).  

 

Photography theory has worked traditionally within two epistemological axes; on the one side it has 

been long understood as a powerful technology for representation of reality, an idea that has been 

supported or criticized but that stands as a regular theme in work to understand photography’s role 

in the world. On the other hand, there seems to be a long interest in the development of a single 

photographic ontology. Barthes, for example, discussed in his “Camera Lucida” that he was 

interested in the “essence” of photography, not in its sociology. There have also been attempts to 

shape the discussion of photography as a photo-technology (Maynard) or as a material object 

(Edwards and Hart), but those approaches have been less prominent overall. 

 

Our approach in this paper is to understand photography not as representation, technology, or 

object, but as the agency that takes place when a set of technologies, meanings, uses and practices 

align. The photographic object, in this sense, is nothing but the materialization of a series of 

assemblages, and the photographic object also enables or constrains other assemblages with its use 

and distribution. We propose therefore, to understand photography as a socio-technical network.  

 

With the arrival of digital technologies, the meaning of what photography is has changed even more 

since new actors, elements and nodes are added to the network, while others clearly have either 

become peripheral or excluded entirely. New actors that are gaining presence in the photographic 

equipment field include companies like Sony and Samsung which were not traditionally involved in 

the film photography industry, but are now sharing the market with Canon, Nikon and other brands 

more traditionally associated with photography. At the same time, some previously dominant 

players like Kodak and Fuji have become increasingly marginal players as film has been almost 

entirely replaced by digital images. Of course, with the shift to digital, the new version of “film” 



 3 

includes the software programs and tools required to access, store, manipulate, and share images. 

Thus, software companies like Adobe, and Internet-based photography sites such as Flickr or 

imageshack, along with companies for data storage like Sandisk or Kensington, are participating in 

the reconfiguration of the definition of what photography means in the digital era.  

 

In this article, we will underline some aspects that relate, on the one side, to the technological 

devices necessary for image production and their “social meanings” and, on the other, the kind of 

practices that shape and are shaped by those devices. We will discuss how the relationship between 

production technologies and meanings have shaped different visual regimes. To do this, the article 

starts with a brief historical description focusing on the production of photos as a three-step process: 

1) Infrastructural elements of image production (cameras, film, memory cards, etc.); 2) technologies 

of processing images (labs, chemicals, computers, software, expertise, etc.); and 3) 

distribution/showing of images.
i
 Finally, we will discuss the latest socio-technological practices, 

and we propose that the iPhone and similar devices which will almost surely follow are possibly 

opening a new stage in visual technologies.  Finally, we end with some reflections on the current 

controversies surrounding photography.  

 

Photography as a socio-technical network: Some theoretical context 

The history of photography is not best understood as a single linear chronological series of technical 

developments. Instead, there have been multiple forces in constant struggle to shape what 

photography, as a technology, is (Latour; Munir and Phillips) along with controversies and fights 

over the social meaning of the photograph. For instance, the fight for the recognition of 

photography as an art, and not only as a technique, in the beginning of the 20
th

 Century 

(Christopherson; Bourdieu; Schwartz) centered on the construction of clear boundaries of what was 

art and what was not art.  

 

Besides the extraordinary number of works about photography from the artistic and aesthetic point 

of view, there is a large corpus of works which study photography as a cultural or artistic practice in 

a wide set of environments. Works are situated in the traditions of anthropology, sociology, cultural 

studies, and visual studies, a growing field closely related to the study and use of images. This 

literature tends to understand photography as a cultural object (Edwards & Hart), as a commodity, 

or as a representation (Barthes, Sontag, Hall, Tagg). There is also a second corpus of research with 

a focus on the economics and business of photography that study how certain technologies were 

produced and diffused in different spheres (Munir; Munir & Philips). Finally, there is a growing 

body of research on digital photography from the computer science perspective, which understands 

photography in relation mostly to software developments (e.g. Van House et al.; Kindberg et al.; 

Ahern et al.). However, works that attempt to relate the technological perspective, the economic 

rationales, and the social and cultural meaning of photography are fewer in number (with some 

notable exceptions including Frosh and Maynard & Slater). One reason, of course, is the difficulty 

of such an exercise because of the multiple elements making up the photography industry: 

economic, political, technological, social, cultural, and so forth.  

The analysis and reflections on the multiple processes involved in image creation are therefore wide 

and multidisciplinary, especially since photography is embedded in multiple practices and situations 

(ranging from tourism to forensic research and from advertising to family memories) and that 

makes it difficult to be studied as a single object.  

 

Therefore, our standpoint is to think about photography as a network of agencies, as a hybrid entity. 

Following Larsen, we argue that: 

 

Photography is so evidently material and social, objective and subjective, that is, 

heterogeneous. It is a complex amalgam of technology, discourse and practice. Photographic 

agency is a relational effect that first comes into force when a heterogeneous network of 



 4 

humans and non-humans is in place. (145) 

 

This proposition is aligned with some approaches that study technological devices in a more 

complex way than in a single “uses and appropriations” or “diffusion of innovation” perspective. 

Two of these approaches are particularly useful: Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Social 

Informatics (SI). 

 

STS is an approach that has its roots in understanding the sociological milieu of science and 

scientists, as well as with understanding an element that underlies much of scientific progress: 

technology. Although STS has different branches,
ii
 in general what they all propose is a study of the 

design, implementation and social meanings of technological artifacts in a complex way, where a 

diverse set of elements struggle and gain alliances with each other to form fixed and stable “black 

boxes”. Therefore, technological advances are not part of a linear and determined history
iii

 but a 

social construction in constant movement and reshaping by the use and co-construction of 

technologies. 

 

Latour in particular can help us to understand the complex nature of the camera as more than a 

simple piece of technology.  Latour proposed the term ‘actant’ as a way to refer to both “people 

able to talk and things unable to talk” (“Mixing Humans” 83) as analysts seek to understand 

behavior within socio-technical networks. The inclusion of non-human artifacts as sources of action 

within a network is non-trivial. Sociological theory, for instance, rarely views technological 

artifacts as more than a peripheral element that human actors manipulate (Latour “Mixing 

Humans”; Star). With Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT), however: 

 

…elements of any kind may be included: humans, technological artifacts, organizations, 

institutions, etc. ANT does not distinguish between or define a priori any kind of 

elements…all networks are heterogeneous or socio-technical. There are no networks that 

consist of only humans or only of technological components. All networks contain elements 

of both. (Hanseth 118) 

 

Latour argues that the most mundane of artifacts can be actants in socio-technical systems; his 

analysis of door closing mechanisms as actants is probably the clearest illustration. Latour describes 

how the simple technological combination of door hinges, which allow walls to temporarily and 

easily open, with hydraulic spring-operated door closers, which gently restore the wall to an 

unbroken surface, serve as relatively skilled actants in a socio-technical system allowing human 

actants to reversibly walk through walls and work in non-entombed but enclosed spaces.  

 

Just as Latour’s door-closers translate the major effort of walking through brick walls into a minor 

effort of pushing open a door, cameras translate the major effort of manually creating a detailed and 

naturalistic image of a scene through painting or etching into the minor effort of pushing a button 

and developing the latent image, or having others develop it for you. Digital photography in turn 

translates the relatively complex and labor-intensive chemical processes of traditional photography 

into a relatively simple and accessible set of steps required to view the resulting images on a 

computer or print them out for viewing. Traditional film-based cameras can be considered 

analogous to Latour’s doors that required grooms to await people who may want to pass through the 

doors, while digital cameras are like Latour’s automatic door closers that allowed human actors to 

walk through walls without additional human input once the socio-technical system was in place. 

Traditional cameras generally speaking require photo lab technicians and an array of human actors 

associated with the developing and printing process, but digital cameras reduce the number and 

types of human actors required to go from a scene-in-the-world to an image that in some sense 

represents that scene. By standing in for human actors, the digital camera is an actant in terms of its 

contribution to the socio-technical network and in terms of its role in the mutual shaping that occurs 



 5 

among actants in the system. 

 

Social Informatics offers an additional perspective for our purposes, because it has a greater focus 

on technologies-in-use rather than technologies-in-design, and is focused on understanding the 

“uses and consequences of information technologies [and] takes into account their interaction with 

institutional and cultural contexts” (Kling 1).  In particular we draw on the Socio-Technical 

Interactions Network (STIN) perspective (Meyer “Socio-Technical Interaction Networks”; Kling, 

McKim & King) that shares with STS the complex understanding of socio-technical networks that, 

ultimately, are embodied in different practices (Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, & Von Savigny). The social 

informatics perspective, in brief, argues that to understand how technologies are used by people, 

one should privilege neither the technical nor the social a priori, but instead must be open to the 

possibility that sociotechnical assemblages can be driven by technological developments, by social 

construction, or by an iterative process of mutual shaping between the two. This position rejects 

blind technological determinism of the form “technology caused X to happen”, but also rejects pure 

social shaping views that all technology can be understood as purely social phenomena. Instead, 

social informatics sensitizes the researcher to understand that in particular instances, either the 

technical or the social may have had a larger role to play in determining the final ways to which 

technology is put to use by human actors. The STIN approach, in particular, does this by focusing 

on actors both included and excluded by new technological assemblages, and looking at how they 

interact with each other and with technology, in particular when they reach what are called 

‘architectural choice points’ where decisions about technology adoption, use, and repurposing 

occur. 

 

The goal of this paper is not to develop a complete theoretical framework for photography with all 

the elements mentioned above, particularly since others have already made strides in this area 

(Larsen; Meyer “Socio-Technical Perspectives”; de Rijcke and Beaulieu; Latour “Visualization and 

Cognition”), and one of the authors of this article has recently completed his dissertation on the 

topic,
iv

 but to establish some elements of the analysis of photography as a socio-technical network 

by questioning the visual and aesthetic forms that are being shaped by it. In order to do that, we will 

somewhat artificially separate the history of photography as a socio-technical system into four 

moments at which significant shifts occurred. Our approach is to review historically the 

combination between infrastructures (technologies), discourses, and social uses of photography in 

different moments in order to understand the sociotechnical network that lies beneath the social 

understanding of photography and the practices in each moment. While this is certainly overly 

reductionist, and may at times seem to fall prey to deterministic views of technology, the exercise 

serves to underline the relationship between different sociotechnical networks during the history of 

photography and to analyse current trends in photographic practices. The time-frames we discuss 

are not fixed and seamless “eras” or historical movements, but are instead more of a general guide 

to illustrate the ebb and flow of the technologies of photography and the social meanings and uses 

attached to these technologies. Some of them coexist today in different forms so they are not 

completely excluded from each other. This exercise will help to show the relationship between 

technologies of image creation and visual regimes made up of practices, objects and the possibilities 

of image creation. In this framework, 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, for example the miniaturization of equipment to support 

mobility and increasing ease of access to a wider set of technical features; these trends also shape 

visual images and social uses. Changes in technology, professional practices, and public uses are 

continually converging and diverging over time. But ultimately, the combination of all those 

elements with socio-historical conditions shapes what is understood as “photography” in different 

times and contexts. This seems especially relevant in the digital era since, following, Lister (2007) 

we have to:  



 6 

begin an account of (new) technology’s role in producing a changed environment for 

photography; to consider how photography continues to be put to work within a cultural, 

institutional and even a physical landscape that is pervaded and altered by information and 

its technologies (252) 

 

And this because, as Hand states: “technologies are inseparable from institutional and 

organizational cultures’ and therefore, ‘we would expect digitization to bring alternative cultural 

conventions and practices into being” (6). To understand these alternative conventions and 

practices, we must first turn our eye to how photography developed. 

  

The history of Photography as socio-technical pendulum 

First moment (19
th

 Century) 

During the early years after the invention of photography, the expertise needed to create images 

required a sophisticated set of technical skills: the preparation of the chemical emulsions that were 

often prepared in the field and applied to glass plates, tin plates or paper, the use of complicated 

heavy and bulky equipment, and detailed knowledge regarding times of exposure, light conditions, 

and so on. It is interesting that in the book edited by Allan Trachtenberg, the essays of the 

“pioneers” of photography including Niepce, Daguerre and Fox Talbot all are notable for their 

scientific explanations of which chemicals in what proportions work best to reach the goal of 

creating technically superior photographs. Photography, at the time, was a scientific development, 

or, as Edgar Allan Poe argued (in his essay reprinted in the Trachtenberg collection): photography 

was “the most important and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science” (37). The 

techniques and technologies available to these early photography pioneers constrained the 

photographic possibilities of early photographers. Technique constrained visual thinking and 

experimentation. For example, the relationship between the characteristics of the chemicals and the 

materials used, along with the timing of processing, was closely related to a certain type of 

photography (for example, the lack of “night photography” or people photographed on the street or 

in the type of journalistic views which would later become common). The modern photographic 

portrait was in its infancy, and was an extremely painful and uncomfortable experience for the 

subjects who had to remain still for a long period of time because of the primitive quality of the 

chemicals for light exposure.  Hence, Fox Talbot thought about photography as “the pencil of 

nature” in relation to the types of objects to be photographed. Framing was only one of several 

complicated skills required to succeed in the successful creation of a photograph. During this first 

moment, all of this knowledge was needed prior to creating a single image, and, as a result of this, 

not everyone was able to do photography, even if they had access to the equipment. If we think 

about the characteristics of photography at the time, the equipment was big, which, among other 

things, reduced mobility. The skills and knowledge to produce images were highly specialized, the 

technical possibilities were very limiting and the time invested in the creation of even a single 

image was very long. The distribution and possible uses of photography had still to be developed. 

Early distribution channels included the traveling photographer selling portraits (often cheap 

tintypes), stereoscope images (which were especially popular with the Victorians), and as 

photographic visiting cards (carte-de-visite). The first networks that shaped (and were shaped by) 

photography were the scientific networks where enthusiasts and amateurs participated actively in 

the development of new optical and chemical advances. 

 

Second moment (ca. 1900-ca. 1930) 

With the introduction of the Kodak camera at the end of the 19
th

 century with the advertising slogan 

“you press the button, we do the rest”, what used to be a technical skill (and as a result, 

predominantly male, highly specialized, and oriented to the upper classes) started to reach a general 

audience. In that way, a “public” for photography was created (Olivier; Jenkins; Murray; Coe and 

Gates). The mass market for photography was being shaped: the “amateur market was explored, 

extracted, and constructed from heterogeneous social groups which did not as such exist before 



 7 

Eastman. The new amateurs and Eastman's camera co-produced each other” (Latour 117).  This led 

to a creation of new forms of visual expression, for example the so-called “snapshots”, casual and 

“home-made” photographs without more pretension than to keep records of the good and happy 

moments in the life of one’s self, and one’s family and friends (Chalfen). 

 

With the emergence of cheap and easy-to-use cameras, people were suddenly able to produce 

photos, and thus what were considered accurate representations of the world around them, without 

any technical skill whatsoever. What the Eastman Company achieved was to translate a range of 

complex processes; knowledge and skills into, quite literally, a “black box”. Nevertheless, the 

possibilities for creativity were limited: framing, timing, and the position of the photographer were 

the only elements that the amateur photographer wielding her Kodak Brownie could control. 

Photographers relinquished control over later aspects of the image creation process since the post 

processing and printing was something that occurred not even in the presence of the photographer, 

but in the distant factories where the cameras containing the film were sent after exposure.  

 

It is worth noting that a necessary network for supporting the success of this process doesn’t have 

anything to do with image itself: the postal service.  This socio-physical network, requiring post 

offices, mail carriers, sorting facilities, and all the other elements of a ubiquitous postal service, 

were a necessary requirement for the success of cameras such as the Kodak Brownie. While postal 

services were not established with any intention of supporting mass-market image creation, without 

the cheap, ubiquitous delivery options the post offered, Kodak could not have succeeded. At the 

same time, there were already enough conditions for photography to reach a wider audience; and, 

like the postal office; some of them were not even strictly related to photography itself. For 

instance, a key element was that new technical capabilities of the press that at the time made the 

diffusion of photographs available for a wider public in the newspapers and magazines (Marien).  

 

In this second moment, all the elements of the photographic process were improved, particularly 

from the point of view of the amateur photography enthusiast: the equipment became less 

specialized, more affordable, smaller, and thus more portable, all of which contributed to 

photography becoming a “mobile” practice, resulting in the embedding of photography into the 

social practices of activities like tourism (Robinson & Picard; Urry) and family celebrations 

(Hirsch). The networks where photography operated and were needed to sustain it were once again 

reshaped, this time with the participation of the media. Photography shifted from being an activity 

limited to specialists to one open to more casual users since the skills needed to create images were 

basic and “so simple they can easily [be] operated by any school boy or girl”.
v
 Still, the quality by 

today’s standards was fairly low and the possibilities were limited. In parallel to these developments 

in the amateur photography market, professional equipment also underwent significant changes: it 

also became smaller, with better and different types of optics and low light films becoming 

available. And, although the time of exposure decreased dramatically for shots to be taken, the 

actual time needed to get the paper copies increased even more. General users never had the same 

control over the image creation as the photographers of the first moment and photography became a 

network between users, equipment and companies that deliver the rolls and then develop and print 

them.  

 

At the same time, different and diverse channels for distribution and showing of photography 

started to be shaped and the media begin to use images. Photographs regularly appeared in 

newspapers, starting around the turn of the 20
th

 century, and photographs increasingly appeared in 

public shows and galleries. Photographs of the distant and exotic became more accessible via 

outlets such as National Geographic, while at the same time mundane snapshots were shared with 

friends and family via albums. Photography began to be part of everyday life.  

 

Third moment (1930-1990) 



 8 

During the third moment, the technical features of cameras became more or less fixed: portable 

camera bodies, fixed or interchangeable lenses, and roll films for professional cameras and portable, 

cheap and easy to use cameras for everyone.
vi

 During the third moment, photography reached a 

massive audience, but another distinction grew that in some ways echoes the very origins of 

photography: that between professionals, amateur hobbyists and snapshooters. This distinction was 

not “natural” and it took a lot of effort to be created by linking photography with other art forms, 

which led to: 

 

The transformation of photography from a medium accessible to a mass audience into an 

exclusive symbolic code linked it with painting, sculpture, and drawing (as Alfred Stieglitz 

had intended), limiting widespread participation through the creation and maintenance of 

social and aesthetic boundaries. (Schwartz 190) 

 

Some other works address this issue (Bourdieu; Christopherson). This distinction between amateurs 

and professionals, especially with photography as art, was not only a matter of technique and the 

right equipment but also a matter of style, composition and lab access and expertise. Nevertheless, 

some of the most famous art approaches were based on techniques and therefore knowledges (Ansel 

Adams, Paul Strand and Edward Weston with their f/64 technique, Alfred Stiglitz with pictorialism, 

etc.). At the same time, the type of equipment used for each kind of photography played an 

important role in shaping (and therefore was also shaped) by this distinction. It was clear that 

professional photography (whether done as art, advertising, or journalism) had specific equipment 

(expensive SLRs, multiple lenses, lighting, professional films, and so forth), and just a few 

amateurs could afford the same type of equipment. That way, the combination of techniques, 

equipment and associations created a network that supported the idea of photography as art, and 

later, the professionalization of photography.  

 

One of the key elements was the creation of distribution circuits that reinforced the distinction 

between professional photography and the photographs that anyone could create with their 

inexpensive camera. Using magazines, newsletters, galleries, newspapers, associations and unions, 

the new professional photographers reinforced their privileged position as professionals. This had, 

as a consequence, the separation between the folk art of the amateurs and the fine art of the 

“photographers” (Christopherson). But while this separation was being shaped, on the opposite side 

of the spectrum people were increasingly creating snapshots of happy moments in their everyday 

life, with cheaper equipment and without any intention of circulating them outside the family circle. 

And, although these photos can be understood as sophisticated constructs of reality, the circulation 

and meaning largely was limited to the small circles consisting of one’s family and close friends 

(Bourdieu; Chalfen). As we can see, the visual shaping of specific kinds of images was part of an 

inscription of those images in networks of knowledge-power (professional, amateurs), which, at the 

same time, used specific types of technologies, some more specialized and expensive, some more 

general and easy to use. 

 

This third moment practically shaped our social understanding of photography and almost all of the 

former problems related to mobility, techniques and possibilities appeared to the participants of the 

time to have been solved. Everybody above a fairly basic economic level in the developed world 

was able to buy an inexpensive camera and could learn how to create quality images for the 

different purposes to which they wanted to put photography, from snapshots to the creation of 

professional images. These separations between the amateur and professional (see Meyer “Digital 

Photography”) increased and photography was institutionalized in different realms with fixed 

characteristics for each one. The distribution and use of photos followed those separations too: 

family albums and shoeboxes for snapshots; magazines, journals and galleries for professional 

photography. The question of control over the entire process was still related not only to the 

technical elements (cameras, rolls, batteries and so on), but also to different companies and 



 9 

networks (photography shops, photo processing labs, money, time, etc.) needed to produce those 

images. The amount of time between capturing the latent image and seeing the printed result relied 

on a network of companies, and the cost of accelerating those services became one of “natural” 

constraints of photographic creation. This situation began to change with digital technology. 

 

Fourth moment (1990-present) 

When digital technology arrived, the field of photography underwent a tremendous transformation 

and it seems that the previous networks had been reshaped, inscribing photography, with its new 

array of elements, in a different network linked with the newly ubiquitous personal computer 

(Meyer “Framing”). New players arrived with their interests, discourses and technologies, 

challenging the traditional photographic institutions like Kodak, Fuji, Canon, Nikon, Minolta, etc.
vii

 

The field of photography changed with the arrival of digital. Not only have the photographic 

artifacts themselves changed as they switched from physical media to electronic media, but the 

methods for showing and distributing photographs was altered massively thanks to the rapid 

growing of a closely related digital technology: the Internet.  Just as the socio-physical network of 

the postal service enabled the growth of film processing, the socio-technical network of the Internet 

has enabled the growth of means for sharing and displaying images free of the constraints of film 

and paper. The key to this moment was the union of photographic devices, computers and the Web, 

particularly social networking websites. Cameras became ubiquitous: the camera was transformed 

from a precious family object shared among family members on special occasions, to a personal and 

constantly carried object of visual creation. This increased dramatically again with the arrival of 

mobile phones capable of taking digital photos. 

 

But one of the most important changes brought by digital technologies, one of many that we want to 

underline here, is that the knowledge needed to produce images, and the needed equipment, 

radically changed. This means, the knowledge economy and power networks where photography 

used to operate were reconfigured, and these changes could be understood in three spheres – 

control, distribution and knowledge – to which we now turn our attention. 

 

User control 

In the second and third moments, only those who pursued photography as "serious leisure", such as 

those who were members of camera clubs or owned home darkrooms, were able to control 

the whole process of image creation. With the emergence of digital technology, this changed in 

several ways. As in the earliest days of photography, photographers could control the entire process 

of photograph production, but unlike the pioneers did not need carts full of equipment to do it. 

Without having to rely on labs to develop and print their rolls of film and photographs, 

photographers now take, process and distribute images once they have the proper equipment. In 

addition, in the digital moment everyone, not just professionals and serious amateurs but also casual 

snapshooters, can have this control, and at almost zero marginal cost once the initial equipment has 

been acquired.  

 

It is important to understand that photography has become part of new ICT-based networks that are 

different from the networks for film photography. Much of the equipment required to manipulate 

and process photographs is not specialist photographic equipment comparable to a darkroom with 

an enlarger and stocks of chemicals, but instead is general purpose equipment including computers 

and printers that had already been purchased specifically for their more general uses. Adding the 

specialist software required to work with photographs is a comparatively inexpensive (or even free) 

undertaking. This has many consequences in photographic practices. Beyond the obvious effects 

such as the quantity of photos taken, concepts like privacy become harder to grasp since the objects 

of photography had become more personal and intimate (Lasén and Gómez-Cruz), as we will see 

more in the following sections.  

 



 10 

New distribution and circulation environment 

Photography as an object stopped having nearly as many constraints of time and place because of 

the change from being a physical object to being a digital one. People can do several things with 

their photos, none of which limit the possibility of using the same photo for other purposes: they 

can send them by email, copy them as many times as they want, print them, and perhaps more 

importantly, they can upload those photos to social networking sites, opening new channels for 

image distribution. Giving away a photograph is no longer a subtractive process, but an additive 

one. During the era in the 1980s and 1990s when photographic labs pushed “double print” offers as 

a way to share a single copy of an image without losing one’s own copy, shared ownership of and 

access to images was a scarce resource. Today, giving away a photograph doesn’t involve the same 

careful social calculations as was required when deciding who should be given a copy of a 

photograph. Uploading a photograph to Facebook means that multiple friends can see one’s 

photographs, as well as comment on them and see then again in the future. 

 

Some of these sites are devoted to photography (like Flickr or photobucket), others are more generic 

sites that include photographs as art (such as deviantart), and others are sites where photography 

plays a key role in the identity staging and social interaction (such as Facebook or Myspace). This 

brings two clear consequences; people create more photos because they have a place to share them 

(Cohen), and these sites form a new circuit for sharing and showing photography. Digital circuits 

are at the same time reshaping traditional circuits; for example stock photography, photojournalism 

and fashion photography are undergoing dramatic changes partly as the result of pressures from 

microstock
viii

 photography sites, the wide availability of Creative Commons licensed images, and 

the rise of citizen journalism (Ritchin) 

 

New technical know-how and the creation of photographs 

An important element in this fourth moment is that, because of the change from a light-chemical 

process to a light-electronic one, a completely new technical know-how has become embedded in 

the creation of photographs: the use of post-processing computer software. As a result of this shift, 

new actors gained interest in photography, namely those experts in the use of computers who 

became drawn to photography as a technically interesting area. The lab skills centered on chemicals 

and enlarging techniques were replaced by the computer skills wielded by Photoshop experts. Far 

more people are able to use at least the basic features of Photoshop or other programs than the 

number of people who ever were able to print and retouch photographs by hand in the past. To be a 

software expert requires heavy training and constant updating of this knowledge since the software 

changes with much greater frequency than darkroom technology did. This shift to computers is part 

of what has been argued elsewhere is a “computerization movement” (Meyer “Framing”). Camera 

companies, therefore, developed strategies to inscribe “knowledge programs” and incorporate them 

in almost every digital camera. Although the programs to set the right combination for shooting 

common objects (portraits, landscapes, sports, etc.) were already incorporated in analogue cameras, 

the design of digital cameras took this logic further and also incorporated “simulations” of former 

combination between processes and equipment (black and white, sepia, vignettes, “old photo” 

looks, etc.). The camera inscribes, using algorithmic computer routines, complex photographic 

processes that are transformed into choices that appear simple to the photographer. Thus, with the 

advent of digital technology, photography users gained control over the process while new 

knowledge and economic and power connections were made with computer and technological 

companies. At the same time, new distribution-showing circuits were generated and are rapidly 

becoming key actors in creating photographic meaning. 

 

With the convergence of digital cameras and mobile phones, the situation is changing even more as 

the new devices "mash up" two of today’s most powerful tools: a communication-connection 

device, and an audiovisual production tool. Visual content is playing a key role in a socio-technical 

communication environment as smartphones are increasingly capable of connecting to the Internet 



 11 

anytime and anywhere. Smartphones add another level to digital possibilities: the connection and 

sharing of images in real time. Some authors pointed that this possibility changed the objects and 

moments of photography; from the ritualistic and important moments of family life (Chalfen) to the 

everyday common and banal things (Okabe & Ito; Petersen; Burgess; Koskinen). This sharing of 

the “banal” was also related to the technical features of cameraphones, since the type of images that 

these phones produced, were very limited in several ways (resolution, light conditions, poor lenses, 

etc.).
ix

 We could say that cameraphones are no more a “camera”, but a “raw” low-quality image 

producing and sharing device. The economic rationale plays an important role since people with flat 

rates on calls, messages and internet tend to use these services just for the fact that they can (Gomez 

Cruz).  

 

From cameraphones to Apple´s socio-technical network 

One of the cameraphones
x
 that has become the flagship of this revolution is no doubt Apple’s 

iPhone. In the presentation of the iPhone 4, Steve Jobs stated, “It’s like a beautiful old Leica 

camera,” explicitely attempting to inscribe a meaningful relationship between the iPhone and one of 

the classical symbols of high quality photographic devices. In this way, Apple, as a company that 

sells not only products but “experiences” (Tsai) is helping to shape the current meaning of 

photography, as we’ll show later. This has important power implications within the network. 

 

We argue that the iPhone, in this moment, is key to understanding how photography’s role in the 

networked society is evolving. First, it is important to notice how the iPhone has been able to 

"enroll" different interests – from companies and users via mass media to photographers and 

software developers – without investing nearly as much effort as other companies that entered the 

photographic arena.
xi

 Since it was launched, the device captivated the press and the users. It was 

cheered as “the invention of the year” (Grossman) and a device capable of a revolution in PC 

culture (Zittrain).  

 

In relation to photography, it is interesting to note that the iPhone´s camera was (and remains) 

clearly technically poorer than much of the competition. This was one of the critiques when the 

phone was launched, since the incorporated camera was considerably less technologically advanced 

compared to those available on other mobile phones in the market. Nevertheless, even though the 

iPhone has not entered the so-called “megapixel race” that some manufacturers have used to attract 

purchasers, it is clear that the relationship between Apple’s device and image creation is exploding. 

Furthermore, this lack of image quality is perceived by some more as a creative incentive than a 

technological limitation. In the American Photo article, for example, photographers relate the 

iPhone with other types of cameras that, instead of “quality” had other “fun” characteristics like 

instantaneity (similar to the Polaroid), discretion (similar to Spycams) or playfulness (like Lomo 

cameras with their “don’t think, just shoot” philosophy). What is clear is the growing number of 

photographers that are using the iPhone, or the cameraphone, as an alternative for image creation. 

To put numbers in this trend, iPhones are the most used image creation devices in Flickr at the 

moment,
xii

 more than any camera.  While only indicative, because Flickr is able to tell from EXIF 

(Exchangeable image file format) data the equipment upon which a photograph was made, these 

data are a good thermometer for current photography practices. 

 

The iPhone as a Socio-technical network: a fifth moment? 

One of the key elements for the success of the Apple iPhone is not directly related to photography 

production but to image distribution: the simplicity of uploading photos from the device to 

websites. This makes the iPhone the perfect tool for the growing practice of many people that are 

interested in showing and sharing photographs of their everyday lives (Cohen; Petersen).
xiii

 This 

simplicity is partly due to the design and affordances of the iPhone itself, but is also tied to two 

main external factors.  First, mobile connections are increasingly fast, especially as a result of the 

now widespread use of 3G technology. Second, the introduction of the iPhone worldwide also 



 12 

ushered in a new type of contract with mobile operators since the internet connection is included, 

obligatory, as a flat rate connection with the iPhone. Thus, everyone with an iPhone has unlimited 

internet access.  

 

Just as the shift from expensive 36-exposure film rolls, with a relatively high per-shot cost, to 

digital memory cards, with essentially a zero per-shot cost, greatly increased the number of photos 

people take since the decision to press the button once more has few consequences from an 

economic perspective, the shift to unlimited internet access changes the calculus people do in their 

heads when deciding whether to upload and share a photograph, now that they can do it quickly, 

and for essentially no additional cost.  This changes the relationship between the people and their 

devices. In the words of one of the informants in Gomez’s work: “I take so many photos just 

because I can, or when I get bored”. Although many of the current smartphones have installed 

interfaces to access social network sites, the applications specifically created for the iPhone are 

notable for their quantity and diversity.
xiv

 There are multiple different applications ranging from 

funny applications to transform the photo to a comic-like drawing to apps that are capable of 

remotely controlling an SLR camera. Nevertheless, some of the most successful applications are 

small pieces of software to process images, from small things like cropping and bright balance to 

more stylish controls and filters, to “simulations” of cross-processing, type of lenses, cameras, etc. 

In fact, one company specializing in such effects, Instagram, was purchased by Facebook for a 

reported $1 billion in 2012. The important thing to note is that Apple’s iPhones and iPods have 

short-circuited the need for expertise in computer post-processing software. Now users have the 

ability to download (in most cases for a small price) small pieces of software that allow one to 

modify photographs without having any computer skill, in an intuitive way, and upload them 

directly to the Web or send them by email. This is a key feature, the possibility of nearly real time 

distribution. The iPhone apps are thus part of the ecosystem, or socio-technical network, that is 

emerging during this fifth moment of photography. 

 

For the first time in photographic history, a single device has made it possible to control the whole 

process, not only of image production and distribution of those images (like any mobile phone) but 

also the possibility of processing those images, in the same device, to obtain different results. As a 

consequence, the process itself has changed. The approach to the final image can be randomly 

experimental rather than pre-planned. Instead of imagining the final result in advance, 

photographers increasingly can design or sculpt their images in the same device on which they were 

captured. In short, a more fluid practice, a playful relationship with the possibilities of the programs 

that changes completely the creation process and make possible that anything, anytime, could 

become subject of photography.  

 

In Bourdieu´s study, he argued that photographic objects were determined socially; for example, 

when he shows a picture of a leaf to some French peasants, they critique the image because: “you 

don’t photograph what you see on a daily basis” (Bourdieu 72) . With the possibilities opened by 

digital technologies, that seemed to change (Okabe). Devices like the iPhone, combined with 

applications like Instagram, add a whole range of filters and tools to modify the poor quality 

pictures of the cameraphone into a more “artsy” images. This changes the politics of seeing the 

banality of images of everyday life. And this makes sense because mobile phone photography, and 

especially the iPhone, is increasingly becoming part of the common practices of established social 

networks (e.g. Facebook and Flickr) and, even more important, there are communities that are being 

formed around iPhone use, not only on social network sites but on other specialist sites that are 

emerging (e.g., http://thebestcamera.com).  

 

In the issue of American Photo mentioned at the beginning of this article, the interviewed 

photographers talk about how the iPhone had opened new creative possibilities, not only because it 

is the “camera that is always with you”, but because it is discrete and gives you the freedom to just 



 13 

shoot. What it is interesting is how again mobility, discretion and opportunity, along with the 

processing capabilities and almost real time possibility of showing the pictures, makes this the 

perfect urban image device.  As one of the informants in Gómez Cruz work said: “there are no more 

Cartier-Bressons, we all are Cartier-Bressons now!” (202-203). It is interesting to notice how the 

poor quality of the mobile phones resembles the beginnings of the Kodak camera. But limitations 

can, turned on their head, become opportunities: the iPhone is increasingly becoming a powerful 

tool for artistic expression as it is pushed by many artists and everyday users. There are blogs 

specializing in photography applications, artistic movements
xv

, books and complete galleries are 

increasingly based on “iPhoneography”.
xvi

 We’re not trying to suggest that the iPhone is the only 

“artistic” cameraphone, but that the device is probably the among the best contemporary examples 

of how a single device has been capable of enrolling different actors to create a subfield that is 

growing and gaining presence. The iPhone acts more as a platform and a node for different 

networks than as a single device. Like a chameleon, iPhone camera can emulate or simulate a black 

and white camera, different kinds of Lomo, a pinhole camera, and many others using software. It 

serves as a platform between companies developing applications and users of them, and even more, 

it is a social tool based in image sharing and showing, making computer mediated social 

interactions more visual every day. Therefore, we suggest that we are witnessing a generalized fifth 

moment of photography, that of complete mobility, ubiquity and connection. 

 

Conclusions 

The history of photography can be understood as a complex network of interactions between 

technological devices, the knowledge needed to produce images, the companies which build 

technologies, and the people who use them, and this sociotechnical network of photography has 

periods of rapid change that is often linked to the development of new technologies alternating with 

periods of relative stability in practices and therefore types of visual objects. The development of 

photography could be seen as a pendulum that, swinging back and forth, negotiates new technical 

possibilities with the knowledge required to use them and the other systems (social, physical, and 

virtual) with which picture creating devices interact. While there have been generally consistent 

trends such as miniaturization and an increasing tendency to integrate more features in cameras, the 

total control of the image production has been primarily reserved for professionals or highly skilled 

and devoted amateurs. For almost a century, the final processing of snapshot photographs relied on 

photo labs. With the arrival of digital photography and the inkjet printer, and more recently of the 

mobile phones and online sites for distributing photographs, many of the assumptions about 

photography are blurring and changing.  The iPhone is, among all the current devices, one of the 

most important, not only because of the technical features that gives control to the photographer of 

the entire process, but because it has been able to enroll different actors to give it a social meaning: 

professional and amateur photographers, the media, software companies, social networks, and 

general users. While mobility and ease-of-use had been important elements in the development of 

photographic devices, mobile phones add a new element: connectivity. Among the increasing 

mobile phone use for photography, the iPhone (and other devices like Samsung’s Galaxy) adds 

even one more layer of complexity, the possibility of post processing the images in the same device. 

In a recent article in the New York Times,
xvii

 it is suggested that smartphone photography will 

replace (or at least transform) point and shoot cameras. Whether this signals the emergence of a 

fifth moment in photography or is merely an elaboration of the fourth “digital” moment, however, 

remains to be seen. 



 14 

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 16 

 

                                                 
Notes: 

i
 For a discussion of how ‘visual knowing’ is changing, seeBeaulieu and de Rijcke. 

ii
 Inside STS there are different sub-categories like Actor-Network Theory (ANT) or Social Construction of 

Technology (SCOT). 

iii
 What Wajcman, from a feminist perspective, criticized as “histories of men inventing and mastering 

technology” (Oudshoorn and Pinch 4). 

iv
 Gomez-Cruz has recently defended his PhD dissertation: “From Kodak Culture to Flickr Culture: An 

ethnography of digital photography practices”, now published as a book (see references). 

v
 From a Kodak advertisment featuring the Brownie camera in 1900. 

vi
 Although the major elements were fixed, there were minor modifications throughout this period in all of 

those elements, for example the use of slides or prints, and different types of films formats: 110mm, 35 

mm, etc. 

vii
 For an extensive and interesting account on this changes, see Munir. 

viii
 “Microstock Photography is one of the common names given to the low priced royalty free stock Photo 

industry” From http://www.microstockphotography.com/ 

ix
 There are, nevertheless, some clear improvements done to cameraphones. These improvements point clear 

evolution toward more sophisticated visual equipment. 

x
 The definitions of “cameraphones” or “smartphones” are more descriptive than theoretical but we are using 

them because of the wider literature that uses them. 

xi
 Nokia for example, with the introduction of their model N95, hired famous directors to shoot shortfilms, or 

organized contests in order to promote their telephone as an audiovisual device. 

xii
 http://www.flickr.com/cameras/ (search performed 11/09/09) 

xiii
 Currently, with the proliferation of smartphones, not only the iPhone is capable of this but it was no doubt 

an important tool for shaping photosharing as a serious photographic practice. 

xiv
 A search on the Itunes Store for the word “photography”, delivers more than 160 applications. 

xv
 http://www.eyeem.com/ 

xvi
 The concept “iphoneography” is used by Glyn Evans in his blog: iphoneography.com, and the concept has 

been used also in flickr groups and in a forthcoming publication. 

xvii
 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/technology/04camera.html