I scroll through my iPhone's camera roll and come across a myriad unnecessary photos that I don't have a need or use for, and happily begin to clear them out in multiples. This process is extremely new, and demonstrates the contemporary approach to photography, particularly the theory of how the value of photography has changed as a result of the evolution of photographic technology (which will form the basis of this post). From film to digital cameras, photography has undergone great development since the 1930’s (pun intended). Looking at the latest phenomenon of the camera phone and theorists such as Sontag and Van House, we see how the way we approach photography today is entirely different than a mere decade ago, in 3 distinct ways... Process, Storage and Social Practice.
I won’t bore you with names and dates but let me give you an overview of how the actual photo taking process has changed over time. Traditionally, cameras took up large spaces and photography required intricate mechanical processes and chemical solutions. It was somewhat a science, and therefore only available to those with the education and knowledge. Even once photography became a public technology, it remained within the upper class of society i.e. those lots of time and money on their hands. It was not until the photography process became more portable, user-friendly and mass marketable that we began to see exposure, wealth and knowledge become non-issues.
The accessibility of
photographic technology increased incrementally over time, bringing us to the
state that it is in today, as Sontag worded it, photography
“became part of the general furniture of the environment” (2006, pg.21). Camera phones best example of this, enabling the capturing of any moment instantly, taking
up no more than the palm of our hand and requiring mere seconds to operate. The
instantaneousness of this modern technology has
seen photography become an everyday practice,
capturing the mundane like what we had for lunch. The
long and costly process that characterises traditional photography made it an
art form that was highly specialised and valuable, with pictures usually taken
at events like birthdays and weddings. However, through technological development, “the camera was transformed from a precious family
object shared... on special occasions, to a personal and
constantly carried object of visual creation” (Gomez Cruz & Meyer, 2012, p
212.). Photography's value has been lost with an increase in popularity and simplicity.
 |
| Are these smart phone photos worth a spot on a roll of film? |
The way we store photographs have also led to their devaluing. Analogue photographs are seen as special and valuable due to the work required to create them, their physicality, and their singular existence. Digital photographs however, are seen on a screen, stored on a chip or hard drive and have no real physical presence, only a virtual one. They are easily and quickly created, viewed and duplicated, and therefore seen as disposable and unoriginal (Keightly, Pickering, 2014, pg.582-583). Even the destruction of these forms of photography differ, as Villi says “the elimination of a physical photograph is a much more demanding effort than discarding an immaterial photograph from a memory card is”. (2010, pg.91)
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| Theories in action: We see the value in the physicality of the stored photos verses the digitally stored ones, and the different levels of value placed on different forms of photography when it comes to destruction (it felt extremely wrong cutting that printed photo) |
Finally,
the whole social practice of photography has changed as a result these changes. The popularity of photo sharing social media
sites online has turned photography from an art form into another
way to communicate with peers. The ability to take the photo and then share it with others on the same device, that is, the camera phone, has turned photography into a
social phenomenon, and a principal device for experiencing something (Sontag, 2006, pg.10). After
all, if you didn’t Instagram that party, did you even go? In this sense the
value of photography has changed rather than decreased. Photography is no longer valued as a path for creative
expression, but valued as a form of social presence and interaction.
 |
| From artwork to Instagram, photography is less about colours, textures and lines, and more about giving people an insight into your life and having another way to communicate with your peers. |
So, when looking at the case of the smart phone, we can see how photography has been rendered photography ridiculously easy and convenient, and to the same extent, its specialness has been comprimised. When the effort, physicality and artistic status of photography is taken away by digitisation, we see how, in fact, that the evolution of photography has in fact changed the value of photography itself.
References
Van House, Nancy A.
(2011). Personal Photography, digital/ technologies and the uses of the visual.
Visual Studies, 26:2, 125-134, DOI:
10.1080/11472586X.2011.571888
Gomez Cruz, Edgar,
Meyer, Eric T. (2012). Creation and Control in the Photographic Process:
iPhones and the emerging fifth moment of photography. Photography, 5:2, 203-221, DOI: 10.1080/17540763.2012.702123
Keightley, E.,
Pickering, M. (2014). Technologies of memory: Practices of remembering in
analogue and digital photography, New Media and Society, 16:4, 576-593, DOI:
10.1177/1461444814532062.
Sontag, Susan. (2006), In Plato’s Cave, On Photography, 3-24
Villi, Mikko (2010),Visual mobile communication: Camera phone
photo messages as ritual communication and mediated presence, 5, pp. 83-99
“W-II Naval Net
Depot” by SSWJ is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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