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Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
| «Пост-фотография» как визуальный артефакт и коммуникативная стратегия: новые перспективы для культурной антропологии / Post-photography as Visual Artifact and Communication Strategy: New Challenges for Social (Cultural) Anthropology |
Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики», Москва, Россия Факультет гуманитарных наук, Школа культурологии Кандидат философских наук, доцент
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor v_chistyakova@mail. ru
«ПОСТ-ФОТОГРАФИЯ» КАК ВИЗУАЛЬНЫЙ АРТЕФАКТ И КОММУНИКАТИВНАЯ СТРАТЕГИЯ: НОВЫЕ ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ ДЛЯ КУЛЬТУРНОЙ АНТРОПОЛОГИИ
В статье рассматривается теоретический потенциал понятия «пост-фотографии» (часто ассоциируемого с понятием «цифровой фотографии») и приводятся основные подходы к ее анализу. В их числе выделяется направление, подразумевающее под «пост-фотографией» изображение, полученное в результате применения цифровых технологий фотографирования, редактирования и рисования. Данное направление, хотя и является наиболее широким, имплицитно содержит в себе возможность разъединения понятий «постфотографического» и «цифрового», что и проявляется в подходах отдельных исследователей и художников. Настоящая статья, помимо общего анализа теоретических перспектив вышеуказанных понятий, также ставит целью предложить иное направление проблематизации новейших явлений визуальной культуры и рассмотреть новое понимание «пост- фотографии» как изображения, которое служит признаком возникновения, развития и функционирования открытых сетевых сообществ. «Пост-фотография», понимаемая не как тип изображения, а как результат реализации набора определенных коммуникативных стратегий, реализуемых в Сети, становится очередным вызовом для социальной (культурной) антропологии, в той мере, в какой она ставит перед собой задачу изучить феномен социальной связанности нового типа. Среди разработанных в рамках социальной (культурной) антропологии подходов и методов выделяется антропология визуальной коммуникации -
направление, которое инициировал в 1970-1980-х гг. американский фотограф и исследователь Сол Уорт (Sol Worth). Экстраполяция данного направления на область коммуникации и социальной интеракции в Сети представляется сегодня одной из наиболее перспективных опций для реализации исследований, связанных с разработкой понятия «пост-фотографии».
Ключевые слова: «пост-фотография», цифровой образ, визуальная коммуникация, сетевое сообщество, социальная связанность, социальная (культурная) антропология.
POST-PHOTOGRAPHY AS VISUAL ARTIFACT AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGY: NEW CHALLENGES FOR SOCIAL (CULTURAL) ANTHROPOLOGY
The paper is focused on the possibility of introduction of «post-photography» (identified often as digital photography) as visual images of a new type that testify appearance, development, and functioning of network communities. It is supposed that post-photography understood as a set of special communicating processes becomes a new perspective for social (cultural) anthropology which aims at studying the new type of social connectedness.
12 (27) 20171
Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
| «Пост-фотография» как визуальный артефакт и коммуникативная стратегия: новые перспективы для культурной антропологии / Post-photography as Visual Artifact and Communication Strategy: New Challenges for Social (Cultural) Anthropology |
Key words: post-photography, digital image, visual communication, network community, social connectedness, social (cultural) anthropology.
Introduction
Having restated in a different way the thesis of Lev Manovich regarding digital cinema that looks like a particular branch of painting, - 'no longer a kino-eye, but a kino-brush'1, - one could say about static image culture that photographic realism is displaced from being its prevalent mode to become only one option among many. 'If photography seeks to find its autonomy in visual submission, it will basically be redundant. Photography's current insubordination is reminiscent of painting's evolution toward pure creation since the mid-nineteenth century'2. A lot of images that look more or less photographically still are called 'photographs ('stills') despite their misrepresentation of what the lens 'sees' but rather what a screen can display. Which consequences of this process are crucial for social (cultural) anthropology? That, apparently, got used to be guided in its research of visual data by traditional optical conventions of what is to be treated as a 'document'? In the current article we try to evaluate the perspectives of rather ambiguous direction (subdiscipline) of social (cultural) anthropology, namely visual anthropology, in order to comprehend how the scholarly study of photography can help to interpret the digital era with its oversaturation of digitized images having more or less photographic character or being described in traditional terms.
Visual anthropology, as it is known, is characterized by duality of research focus: it makes its own visual texts (photos, films, TV-series, etc.), and at the
1 Manovich, Lev (2001), 'Digital Cinema and the History of Moving Image' / in: The Language of New Media, MA: MIT Press, pp. 293-308.
2 Marques, Rui Pedro Figueiredo, and Batista, Joao Carlos Lopes (eds), (2017), Information and Communication Overload in the Digital Age, Hershey, USA: IGI Global. P. 45.
same time it studies visual artifacts which are already available in studied culture: buildings, interiors, clothes, household items, craft products, decorations, pictures, etc. The latter implies the analysis of historical photographic practice as cultural behavior3, as well as ethnographic studies of snapshots as vernacular practices4, and in some measure social history of photography5. In a broad sense, this branch of visual anthropology could be supposedly called anthropological study of images, if we take it out of context of art history and move it closer to the social approach to photography in the scope of which photographs are able to tell us something about different forms of social inte-
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raction and connection facilitated by online platforms. -
The advantage of such a kind of approach is its focus on social contexts, and social meanings of making and using images than on the photograph as an image.
Post-photography, which is at the center of our consideration, serves as a visual artifact and in itself could be the subject of interest for anthropological study of images insofar as it says something about its author, the context and purposes of its production, and the audience which it is intended for. That would be right in regard to the image of any origin, but at present it is post-photographic manipulation that often becomes a crucial factor in the process of development
3 Ruby, Jay (1996), 'Visual Anthropology' / In: Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, David Levinson and Melvin Ember (eds), vol. 4, New York: Henry Holt and Company, pp.1345-1351,
http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/ruby/cultanthro.html; Edwards, Elizabeth (ed) (1992), Anthropology and Photography: 1860-1920, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
4 Musello, Christopher (1980), 'Studying the Home Mode', Studies in Visual Communication (1980): 23-42.
5 Bourdieu, Pierre (dir) (1965), Un art moyen, Essai sur les
usages sociaux de la photographie, Paris: Editions de Minuit.
12 (27) 20171
Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
| «Пост-фотография» как визуальный артефакт и коммуникативная стратегия: новые перспективы для культурной антропологии / Post-photography as Visual Artifact and Communication Strategy: New Challenges for Social (Cultural) Anthropology |
of the communities of a new type. The link of postphotographic image and community moves to the center of our attention and forces us to expand our ideas about social connectivity.
Post-photography: ways of questioning
The first purpose is to analyze this term, to outline the ways of its definition, and then to try to understand what potential it may have for social (cultural) anthropology and its methods. Early definitions of post-photography often focused on the technological shift that moved from traditional film photography to digital cameras. Because it is based on pixels rather than a chemical reaction, digital photography is considered as a new medium with its own characteristics. This leads us to the debate about digital media and its specificity compared with lens based technologies. In other words, this initial part of the debate concerns the origin of image understood as physical and chemical characteristics of the medium. We have much to cite on this question if we take into consideration a range of the research papers and books issued during the recent decades. One of the general theses concerning the difference between traditional and digital images lies in the assumption that previously both photography and cinema as media technologies played a role that could capture and store visible reality. The difficulty of modifying images once they were recorded was exactly what gave photography and cinematography their value as the documents, assuring their authenticity6. For this reason, stills have been treated as the documents by scientists and other practitioners no later than the end of 19th century. The shift from lens-based photos to digital ones began to be interpreted, first of all, as a technological turn which had caused further changes in the social and cultural fields. The example of such an approach is the book entitled 'The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era'
6 Manovich, Lev (2001), 'Digital Cinema and the History of Moving Image' / in: The Language of New Media, MA: MIT Press, pp. 293-308.
by William J. Mitchell, who provided the early critical analysis of the digital imaging revolution and developed the idea of radically challenged photographic adequacy thrown into question by the emerging technology of digital image manipulation and synthesis7. It is likely that such a kind of approach for the most part identified the notion of post-photography with the notion of digital photography. In a recently published book entitled 'Information and Communication Overload in the Digital Age' we meet the assertion which still keeps the traces of such kinds of understanding: 'Post-Photography is characterized by immateriality of the medium; it is not objective, but rather information, numerical code... Therefore, it responds much better to the idea of information flow, the absence of concrete materiality, the superfluousness of the object'8. The attempt to make a conceptual shift in the understanding of photography of the digital era was made by the artist Michael Schwab who proposed the term 'photograph- 114 ics' to demonstrate '... the marriage of the photographic with the graphic. The term 'photographics' acknowledges the matter of fact shift to the graphic whereas its photographic implication reflects the photographic style that guarantees a photographic reality even within graphic condition'9. This possibly meant a shift in the understanding of photography from medium to style (in other words, aesthetic conventions).
Different understanding, implying that digital media is not simply the latest stage of a technological
7 Mitchell, William J. (1992), The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
8 According to the general understanding, post-photography comprises those practices which derived from medium photographic digitalization. Some practices related to the use and digital image edition of photographic origin'. Marques, Rui Pedro Figueiredo, and Batista, Joao Carlos Lopes (eds), (2017), Information and Communication Overload in the Digital Age, Hershey, USA: IGI Global. P. 69.
9 Schwab, Michael (2004), 'The Digital Image: Photography and Photographics' / in: Jane Harris/Mike Press (ed), 'Pixel Raiders 2 conference proceedings', CD-ROM, Sheffield Hallam University
http://www.seriate.net/PixelRaiders2_Photographics.pdf.
12 (27) 20171
Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
| «Пост-фотография» как визуальный артефакт и коммуникативная стратегия: новые перспективы для культурной антропологии / Post-photography as Visual Artifact and Communication Strategy: New Challenges for Social (Cultural) Anthropology |
process with its own aesthetics had taken into account more the fact that implementation of a new technology produces new ways of communicating and relating to others and alters our understanding of ourselves and others10. 'After Photography' by Fred Ritchin seems to be the important example of rethinking digital culture in this light. Author of the book argues that even though digital photography destroys aesthetics of analogue imagery based on its indexicality, it makes it possible to move photographic values from the appreciation of a picture's singular, inherent qualities to its connectivity with a series of pictures or informational resources. Digital photography can not serve as a document but gives us much greater control over the individual contents. It opens up to non-linear connections and transforms photography in the form of individual practice into omnipresent communication strategy. While analogue photography relied on a singular photographic vision, the digital photography, thanks to its non-referential character, provides the new logic of hypertexts that create 'mosaic connections', links to further visual and textual information that amplify our initial understanding11. It is no coincidence that in the post-photographic era we take note increasingly of the prevalence a series of photos against individual photos (although we remember that 'seriation' is inherent quality of photography)12. Fred Ritchin introduces the
10 Marshall McLuhan was the first media theorist who clearly illustrated that media are not transparent mediations through which messages are seamlessly communicated, but they frame and determine the communication process itself. McLuhan, Marshall (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, London and New York: The Mit Press.
11 Ritchin, Fred (2008), After Photography, New York: Norton & Company Inc.
12 Some scholars emphasize the tendency to put together
dozens images to make a composite form, to create '... works in the form of a grid, or a mosaic, works intended to be observed as a whole' (Marques, and Batista, p. 56). One
of the perfect examples is the Mountains, Moving (18502012): of Aperture Masters of Photography project by Rinko Kawauchi, Vik Muniz, Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, Martin Parr, Doug Rickard, Viviane Sassen, Alec Soth, Penelope Umbrico, James Welling (see:
term 'hyperphotography': by testifying to a new relationship to space, time, authorship and other media, digital photography becomes 'a component in the interactive, networked interplay of a larger metame-dia'13. Thus, although Ritchin does not develop the notion 'post-photography' directly, the proposed way to problematize the notion 'digital photography' contributes much to the discussions around the visual phenomena we are interested in.
Other direction of the discussions had increasingly led to separation of the notions. Apparently, among the first successful attempts to describe the changes which had happened to the traditional photography in terms of practices and attitudes of the photographer and viewer/user (rather than the technology that he or she uses) there were theoretical approaches of such scholars as José Van Dijck, Susan Murray, and Nancy Van House. It had been noticed by them that people almost in most cases use digital cameras to 115 make traditional photos and only a smaller part of people use digital cameras to practice post-photography. So, if we consider post-photography from the perspective of social practices, we can suppose that post-photography intersects with digital photography, but does not encompass it14. The analysis of changes happening to photography during the digital era can be made at the level of photo-taking and photosharing processes. This implies, in its turn, the shift from attention to individual experience of an artist to consideration of collective practices of those who some way or other is involved in photography.
http://www.penelopeumbrico.net/index.php/project/mountai ns/).
13 Ritchin, Fred (2008), After Photography, New York: Norton & Company Inc. P. 141.
14 Murray, Susan (2008), 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, 7.2 (2008): 147-163; Van Dijck, Jose (2008), 'Digital photography: communication, identity, memory', Visual Communication 7.1 (2008): 57-76; Van House, N.A. (2011), 'Personal Photography, Digital Technologies, and the Uses of the Visual', Visual Studies 25:1 pp. 125-134.
12 (27) 20171
Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
| «Пост-фотография» как визуальный артефакт и коммуникативная стратегия: новые перспективы для культурной антропологии / Post-photography as Visual Artifact and Communication Strategy: New Challenges for Social (Cultural) Anthropology |
To a certain extent separation between 'digital photography' and 'post-photography' was unintentionally encouraged by the artists themselves who were actively working outside of digital manipulation. Relevant examples are given in the book entitled 'Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera' by Robert Shore, who brought together three hundred artists and tried to discuss how and why they work in a 'post-photography' mode15. Author's attention is focused on the use of photography in an altered state as such, whether it meant found (staged) photography or authorial newly made digital images. He took into consideration both found imagery which became increasingly important in post-photographic experiments and works of artists who create entirely original works using avant-garde techniques drawn from both the digital and analogue epochs. Some scholars tend to define the appeared new type of photographer as 'selector', 'ap-propriator', or even 'anti-photographer'16, making it clear that key words in post-photographic strategy is 'sharing' or rather 'appropriation', and Internet is the major (although not exclusive) laboratory where such processes of 'creative borrowing' take place. 'The term ['anti-photographer'] refers to artists who use multiple strategies such as appropriation, editing, re-contextualization, intervention, redefining archives, etc. We understand the term appropriation to mean the action of taking possession of images already captured by others without contemplating the concept of author-ship'17. Thus, digital technologies evidently have profound impact on how pictures are taken, and - possibly, to a greater extent - how found materials are selected and then manipulated. But even so correlation
15 Shore, Robert (2014), Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera, London: Laurence King Publishing.
16 Foote, Nancy (2004), 'Los Anti-fotógrafos' / in: Douglas Fogle (ed), The last picture show: artistas que usan la fotografía. Tendencias conceptuales de 1960 a 1982. Catálogo de exposición, Minneapolis, Vigo: Walker Art Center, MARCO.
17 Marques, Rui Pedro Figueiredo, and Batista, Joao Carlos
Lopes (eds), (2017), Information and Communication Over-
load in the Digital Age, Hershey, USA: IGI Global. P. 46.
between 'digital photography' and 'post-photography' is still questionable, and it is likely that these terms can not be simply reduced to each other. Especially given that the Internet though gives to images of any origin pervasive online existence, nevertheless it does not serve as the only space for image exhibition18.
The next part of this debate scrutinizes the photo-taking and photo-sharing processes. In this case the notion of post-photography seems to cover not the technology of image-making, but rather the practices and attitudes of the photographer. Post-photography could be defined here, in the narrow sense, as continuation of the photo which could keep external similarity with what the visual product turned out as a result of use of a device with a lens and a recording medium. Post-photography may be connected with traditional photography by its external photorealistic look which is still a basis for snapshots taken every day. But 'post-photography' is rather such a term which is applicable 116 more to what a picture-taker makes, to methods of his or her work, understanding of what he or she makes and the attitude towards his or her work. To a lesser extent it belongs to technologies which a photographer uses and in an even smaller degree to what the viewer sees. Thus we approach an anthropological understanding of post-photography and begin to analyze explicitly image-handling as social practices.
Post-photography understood as communication strategy
Social practices around photography are studied very well. Most of them come from understanding photography's general function that lies in remembering 'what has been but is no more'19. A phenomenon
18 For example, Rick Wester Fine Art company (New York) had exhibited in 2015 Yola Monakhov Stockton's Post-Photography series (see: http://www.rickwesterfineart.com/exhibitions-archive/2015/8/ 13/post-photography).
19 Sontag, Susan (1977), On Photography, New York: Far-rar, Straus & Giroux; Barthes, Roland (1981), Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York: Farrar, Straus
12 (27) 20171
Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
| «Пост-фотография» как визуальный артефакт и коммуникативная стратегия: новые перспективы для культурной антропологии / Post-photography as Visual Artifact and Communication Strategy: New Challenges for Social (Cultural) Anthropology |
of post-photography makes considerable changes in this function. It no longer helps to remember some moments 'from the past' but rather helps photographers and viewers to communicate and to identify who they are. Preliminary study of the social use of digital photography demonstrates a certain shift in engagement with everyday images, as it has become less about special or rarefied moments of domestic living and more about 'an immediate, and rather fleeting'20. Post-photography likely carries a greater sense of immediacy than photography does. It seems to be more alive, immediate, and often a transitory practice. Being a sort of image-based communication, post-photography implies posting images quickly, because out-of-date photos quickly lose their value. Advances in digital photography have enabled this effect by eliminating much of the processing time required for traditional photography and by giving the photographer instant feedback on the camera's monitor. Susan Murray adds that the everyday image becomes also something that everybody can create and comment on with relative authority and ease21. Post-photography thus completely breaks down the traditional differentiation between amateur and professional categories of image-making. It has become a mass social practice that rather helps people to communicate and to define themselves than helps them to remember moments of the past.
Post-photography as an agent of image-based communication and identification thus can be considered in two ways, if we speak of this from an anthropological perspective. The first way implies study of groups of people who tend to take photos and to share them primarily within existing off-line social contacts. Traditionally, cameras were primarily memory-capture devices, especially in family photography. That is, for
and Giroux; Bourdieu, Pierre (1996), Photography: A Middle-brow Art, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
20 Murray, Susan (2008), 'Digital Images, Photo-Sharing, and Our Shifting Notions of Everyday Aesthetics', Journal of Visual Culture, 7.2 (2008): 147-163.
21 Ibid.
example, what anthropologist Richard Chalfen called 'Home Mode' photography when he explored snapshots, slide shows, family albums, home videos, to discover 'what people do with their photos as well as what their photos do for them'22. Photos have long been used to contribute to individual and group narratives and identities, to make a coherent story out of the moments of people's lives. They maintain social relationships; construct personal and group memory. The term 'Kodak culture' proposed by Chalfen describes social practices based on understanding photography in the traditional sense: as a way of capturing memories about which stories can later be told. The other way to consider image-based communication and identification consists in attempts to analyze online social contacts which correlate indefinitely with offline groups and individuals. In contrast to the 'Kodak culture' the notion of 'Snaprs' was introduced in 2007 by Andrew D. Miller, and W. Keith Edwards who published a pa- 117 per under the title 'Give and take: a study of consumer photo-sharing culture and practice'23. The 'Snaprs' constituted a number of people sharing photos not only with friends and contacts, but with strangers as well, and often mainly with strangers. Unlike 'Kodak culture' people who were concerned with privacy and tried to use more established technology such as e-mail to share their photos in a private and controlled way, 'Snaprs' people demonstrate completely new practices such as group 'photo-strolling', public sharing of photos and such a practice as 'folksonomy' which is also known as collaborative tagging or social classification. 'Folksonomies' became popular on the Internet as part of social software applications such as photographic
22 Chalfen, Richard (2008), Snapshot Versions of Life, Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
23 Miller, Andrew D., and W. Keith Edwards (2007), 'Give and take: a study of consumer photo-sharing culture and practice' / In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California, USA, April 28 - May 03, 2007), San Jose, California, USA: ACM, pp. 347-356
http://portal. acm. org/citation. cfm?id= 1240624.1240682.
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Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
| «Пост-фотография» как визуальный артефакт и коммуникативная стратегия: новые перспективы для культурной антропологии / Post-photography as Visual Artifact and Communication Strategy: New Challenges for Social (Cultural) Anthropology |
annotation. We can see that a great part of the participants in the 'Snaprs' group use Flickr as their primary means of photo-sharing; and a set of recent research projects, beginning from Miller, and Edwards, are devoted particularly to Filckr as the world's largest photography Web-community. The 'Snaprs' group is much less concerned with privacy and uses photosharing as a creative outlet, building new social bonds. One of the recent examples of such a practice is a 'social travelling': a traveler is permanently connected to the other travelers by means of sharing of images, ideas and experience24. This phenomenon of 'connected mobility' led to transformation of traditional travelling which became a continuous 'process transcending the everyday activity of millions of people and resonating in the lives of their connected peers' (through Foursquare, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and other services).
Thus we can see that the notion of 'post-photography' involves solely the Internet-based photography practices which mean new socialization types, while notion of traditional photography can imply both Internet and old ways of image taking and sharing. This distinction to a lesser extent is based on whether the camera is digital or not. More likely we deal here with the effects of the Internet as a new medium. Of course, digital technologies correspond to the Internet in the best way as they permit to create images very quickly. The Internet in its turn is a certain communication platform which is intended to arrange quick exchange processes. Consequently, if we speak of the 'medium' as about the 'message', quoting McLuhan, we assume that the 'message' of such a 'medium' like the Internet is new in forms of social behavior and social relations. Supposedly, the attempt to approach such a new was introduction of a term 'communicating
identity' which allowed us to treat identity as open and fluid construction25. Such a view of identity allowed us to focus on the processes of negotiation, and exchange of communicative (prevalently, pictorial) messages which expand within online environments.
Preliminary theoretical implications
In that case social (cultural) anthropology should analyze these new social phenomena by means of available images, disposable, cheap and quick. Let us consider two possible methodological approaches which anthropology can follow in an effort to define and to understand such a new field as Webcommunities that are based on quick image-making and image-sharing processes.
The first approach can be called the anthropology of images on the model of the 'historical anthropology of images' proposed earlier by Peter Burke
who called this direction also the 'cultural history of -
images'26. This way allows us to reconstruct the rules of conventions, conscious or unconscious, governing perception and interpretation of image within a given culture. The most valuable aspect of this direction is the possibility to look indirectly at the invisible numbers of people who use Web-services through the history of their views and visual representations. The difficulty of this approach is a huge number of pictures which quickly replace each other. Even if we try to take as a research item a series of images (as a cultural history of images offers), it is usually impossible to find the beginning and the end of series.
The second approach is the anthropology of visual communication which is concerned with production, distribution, reception, circulation, and transformation of visual forms, inside and across communi-
24 Ronzhyn, Alexander (2014), 'Social Travelling: New Connected Mobility' / Paper presented at the Conference 'Anthropology and Photography' (London, 29-31 May 2014)
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/rai/events/rai2014/panels.php5?P anelID=2808.
25 Zingsheim, Jason, and Goltz, Dustin Bradley (eds) (2011), Communicating Identity: Critical Approaches, San Diego, CA: Cognella Academic Publishing.
26 Burke, Peter (2001), Eyewitnessing: the uses of images as historical evidence, London: Reaktion Books Ltd.
12 (27) 20171
Виктория Олеговна ВАСИЛЬЕВА / Victoria VASILEVA
| «Пост-фотография» как визуальный артефакт и коммуникативная стратегия: новые пер спективы для культурной антропологии / Post-photography as Visual Artifact and Communication Strategy: New Challenges for Social (Cultural) Anthropology |
ties27. Being extended to the field of social networking, this approach emphasizes not the images themselves but rather the ever-changing sequence of images, the ebb and flow of the digital stream. As photography becomes the basic mean of communication and self-expression on social networking sites, it is not now just the anthropological source of information about everyday life. It is the embodiment of people's ideas, feelings and desires which compose a portrait of a
contemporary person in ways that he or she wants to be seen by others. Anthropology of visual communication implies the study of all modes of visual communication in the Web, such as tagging, comments and others. If we understand post-photography rather as a practice than a type of image, the anthropology of visual communication seems to be a relevant way to study it. This approach allows to discover loosely structured Web-communities which by the same visual means create a sense of shared experience and belonging, and keep their identities open and transient.
119
27 Worth, Sol (1981), Studying Visual Communication, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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