Collocated photo sharing, story-telling, and the performance of self
Introduction
One of the most successful consumer technologies of the twentieth century was the film camera. Recent years have seen massive changes in personal photography, including the transition from film to digital; the introduction of small, high-quality digital cameras, and cameraphones; and easy display and sharing of digital images, not only with intimates but posted online to the world at large.1
This paper is primarily concerned with collocated sharing, specifically of personal photos, that is, images made by non-professionals, for themselves and intimates, acquaintances, and even strangers. While computer networking has enabled great advances in photo sharing at a distance, collocated sharing remains important. And, I argue in this article, will remain so.
The approach taken here is rooted largely in science and technology studies (STS). STS approaches technologies as sociotechnical systems: heterogeneous networks of culturally and historically situated artifacts, technologies, practices, people, and understandings. Technology “design” is a process of heterogeneous engineering of these components (Law, 2001), and not necessarily by designers. Meanings are created by users as they match the possibilities of the technology to their ongoing and emerging goals, experiences, and activities. An artifact's design constrains these interpretations, especially over the short term. But, as Suchman et al. (2002) put it:
Technologies appear in these investigations as socio-material apparatuses that align themselves into more and less coherent and durable forms…in ongoing practices of assembly, demonstration, and performance. The shift from an analysis in terms of form and function to a performative account, moreover, carries with it an orientation to the multiplicity of technoscience objects. (Suchman et al., 2002; pp. 163–164).
To design useful photo-related, image-related technologies, we need to understand personal photography as an enduring but malleable assemblage of technologies, practices, intentions, and understandings embedded in people's daily lives. We need to support both on-going and emerging photographic practices. Most of all, we must not “break” a technology that is so widely used and loved, but, if possible, enhance users’ experience.
This article reports empirical findings from four inter-related studies, with an emphasis on collocated sharing. We found that collocated sharing remains important in a digitally-mediated, distributed world. Both traditional and emerging image-related technologies are being used in collocated sharing. Co-present viewing is a dynamic, improvisational construction of a contingent, situated interaction between story-teller and audience.
In asking why collocated sharing is practiced regularly and whether it will continue to be, in a networked, distributed world, I argue that the concept of performance, as articulated in somewhat different ways by Erving Goffman and Judith Butler, can help us to understand the co-present sharing of photos and its role in enacting identity and relationships. Finally, I suggest some implications for both HCI research and the design of image-related technologies.
Section snippets
Related research
Research on personal photography and its associated practices is spread across several fields, including visual sociology, visual anthropology, and visual studies, as well as HCI. The existing empirical research, however, must be treated with caution. Personal photography is a culturally and socially situated activity. For example, Bourdieu and Bourdieu (2004) say of the French peasants in the 1960s that hanging family photos in the more public parts of house, a common practice among our
The present study
This paper draws on findings from four related interview-based investigations into personal photography, part of our larger on-going research program about social media, personal photography, and new media (Davis et al., 2005; Van House et al. 2004, Van House, 2006a, Van House, 2006b, Van House, 2007; Van House et al., 2005; Ames et al., 2009). In addition, this author and various co-researchers over about 5 years were participant observers and engaged in less formal observation of photographic
Findings
First we talk about image-making generally; then we organize our empirical observations by the medium of sharing with an emphasis on collocated viewing and the changes associated with digital technologies.
Discussion: collocated sharing
In keeping with our emphasis on user-constructed meanings and goals, in this part of the paper we discuss some possible reasons for the importance of collocated sharing and its continuing popularity, and how it may tie into people's enduring, on-going, practices and goals.
Implications
Personal photography and collocated photo sharing are likely to remain important in people's daily lives. Personal photos are deeply implicated in memory, identity, and relationships. The synchronous, situated narrative constructed in the moment, in conjunction with the audience, is an important social practice by which images, audience, and subject come together for both individual and group self-understanding and relationships. Performance of the individual and the group—in both Goffman's and
Acknowledgements
My thanks to my former colleague Marc Davis, who got me started on this research and helped in the early stages; Morgan Ames, Mirjana Spasojevic, and Mor Naaman, who were part of the Zonetag research; and the various student researchers who were part of this work over time, especially Vlad Kaplun.
References (63)
- et al.
Over-exposed?: privacy patterns and considerations in online and mobile photo sharing
- Ames, M., Eckles, D., Naaman, M., Spasojevic, M., Van House, N., 2009. Requirements for mobile photoware. Personal and...
- et al.
Why we tag: motivations for annotation in mobile and online media
- et al.
Tabletop sharing of digital photographs for the elderly
- et al.
Storytelling with digital photograph
The family photographic condition
Visual Anthropology Review
(2000)Photography: A Middle-Brow Art
(1996)- et al.
The peasant and photography
Ethnography
(2004) - Bruner, J., 1991. The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry 18,...
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
(1990)
Snapshot Versions of Life
Interpreting family photography as pictorial communication
Mobiphos: a collocated-synchronous mobile photo sharing application
Supporting social presence through lightweight photo sharing on and off the desktop
Collaborating around collections: informing the continued development of photoware
Mmm2: mobile media metadata for media sharing
Mediated Memories in the Digital Age
Implications for design
Requirements for photoware
Audiophotography: Bringing Photos to Life with Sounds
Sound, paper and memorabilia: resources for a simpler digital photography
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Taking butler elsewhere: performativities, spatialities and subjectivities
Environment and Planning D—Society & Space
The family gaze
Tourist Studies
Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation
Visual Studies
Story Circle: Digital Storytelling around the World
Snapshots of almost contact: the rise of camera phone practices and a case study in Seoul, Korea
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies
Introduction: history, memory, and the family album
“Sweet It Is to Scan…”: personal photographs and popular photography
The ubiquitous camer: an in-depth study of camera phone use
Pervasive Computing
Cited by (150)
Invertible mask network for face privacy preservation
2023, Information SciencesUses and gratifications of photo sharing on Instagram
2022, International Journal of Human Computer StudiesCitation Excerpt :Sundar (2008), in the MAIN model, argues that peer influence and trend influence triggers a ‘bandwagon heuristic’ and influence people to follow a particular style or attitude. Past research suggests that social media users seek trend influence gratification to follow a particular trend or to be an active part of a peer group (Quan-Haase & Young, 2010), and photo sharing can be strongly linked to peer communication (Van House, 2009; Malik et al., 2016). According to Malik et al. (2016), ‘people not actively involved in photo sharing might get left out of the discussion around the peers around certain topics or trends’ (p. 17).
Cultural heritage through the lens of COVID-19
2022, PoeticsUnnoticeable synthetic face replacement for image privacy protection
2021, NeurocomputingCitation Excerpt :At the same time, modern deep learning methods can make use of these huge amounts of data to provide intelligent applications to make our life more convenient. However, the unprotected application of big data and intelligent technology will bring about security risks on the privacy of individuals who do not want to give away their personal information [1–7]. Once someone’s visual data, especially the face images, are exposed to the public, he/she may have troubles if these data are collected and misused by malicious parties to achieve some financial or political gains [8–12].