Abstract
The shift from analogue to digital photography has brought about a number of changes in vernacular photographic practice. People take far more pictures of everyday scenes even though they continue to take them of special occasions, and they take many more photos than hitherto because of the possibility of deleting those subsequently not desired with no economic cost involved. They also post up their images more publicly than before, and distribute them more widely because of the Internet and social media. Such changes in what people do with their digital cameras and photos make this collection of essays a welcome publication. It is, in one sense, a way of updating the earlier anthology edited by Jo Spence and Patricia Holland (1991), Family Snaps, which offered a range of commentaries on the meanings of domestic photography. That was, at the time, an anomalous book, for most of the work done on photography over the past century has been about art photography. As Geoffrey Batchen among others has argued, vernacular photography has been pushed to the side and critically belittled. In the opening chapter here, Martin Lister suggests that such photography, and the problems that have been shoved to the edges of photographic theory, may be moving to centre stage. That too makes this a timely publication. Following Lister’s overview on the development of the ubiquitous image, we have chapters on a variety of topics: tourist photography (Jonas Larsen), digital technologies and photographic practice (Gillian Rose on family photography, Joanne Garde-Hansen on friendship photography, Mette Sandbye on photo-booth photography among Japanese teenagers), spatial distance as punctum (Mikko Villi), changing use of celebrity photography in online ‘galleries’ (Anne Jerslev and Mette Mortensen), digital doctoring of images (Tanya Sheehan), the ‘archival turn’ in contemporary art and photo-sharing sites (Michael Shanks and Connie Svabo). It is difficult writing about changes in media usage when they are occurring, as we cannot know as yet how they may eventuate or where they may lead. For this reason, the book is to be commended for avoiding the over-the-top claims of the early 1990s – even including apocalyptic pronouncements on the end of photography – and striking a more appropriate cautionary note, for rather than developing via giant leaps and huge ruptures, photography has always proceeded through a continual series of reinventions, and whatever is changing in current times seems to be producing an admixture of old and new, alteration and adaptation, continuities with the past and the embrace of innovation and fresh opportunities. As the editors note in their introduction, ‘While digital photography affords new possibilities (because it performs differently from analogue photography), it is less clear if and how these affordances are used in everyday practice, which we set out to explore in this book’ (p. xxiii). What makes the exploration worthwhile is that everyday digital photography is part of a broader changing media landscape. This collection helps map out what is happening there.