Written by Michele Zappavigna.
(Visual CommunicationVolume 15, Issue 3, August 2016, Pages 271-292© The Author(s) 2016, Article Reuse Guidelineshttps://doi.org/10.1177/1470357216643220)
This section discusses the way smartphones have become an engrained part of the human experience. Significantly the cameras attached to the smartphone, it has allowed photography or the act of image making to become as domesticated as the use of a phone over time. It is accessible to anyone with a phone, with the ability to get a phone becoming easier, the act of image making is accessible to almost everyone.
The phenomenon of the ‘selfie’ was something which came with this. The front facing camera making this an easier act to create these kind of images and project them into the internet, where you could use the images to post and share, profile picture imagery etc. The common act of taking selfies or images of others had lost its meaning for a moment and became surrounding with narcissism or the obsession with self and keeping up with others. Social media influencers such as Kim Kardashian played a big role with this, even releasing a book filled with her own selfies from over the years.
Apps such as Instagram helped the phenomenon to spread, billions of people use the app, therefor the over saturated app solely to post images helped this to grow. The app allowed for people to post images in real-time, leaving a wider audience to consider how their lives are going when other people are doing different things at the same time. The app became a place not only for the selfie, but to distribute images of wealth, life-style and bodies. The app, including others such as Twitter or Facebook, allowed you to ‘follow’ others. The people with the most followers were deemed as the most ‘successful’ or ‘interesting’. Audiences are left feeling like they need to aspire to be like these people in order to have a successful and happy life.
This plays back into the ‘snap-shot’ aesthetic ideal, where people only share the good parts of their lives, leaving others feeling like their real, normal lives aren’t adequate. It would all depend on the relationship the followers have with the content they are interested in, but coming from personal experience, seeing someone live a flashy life-style, with plenty of holidays and seemingly no worries or issues, it can make you feel unworthy.
People began using the app for promotion, sharing their almost impossible to achieve bodies, extreme wealth and material goods. Photoshop and editing apps helped to promote this life and create a false narrative with the captions or the sections of the images people chose to post. It wiped out the ‘real’ from the world for a moment, leaving people catching up now, fighting to become comfortable with their bodies, minds and lives. Including myself. My current project has become somewhat of a love letter to myself, uncovering my most deep-rooted insecurities, which haven’t been helped by social media and the hard to reach beauty standards of today. It can be difficult to keep playing catch-up with a life that isn’t real.
The next point to consider when thinking about social media is, once you post your image into the ‘void’ that is the internet, it is no longer yours. You lose the right to say who can do what with the image, people can re-post the image leaving us to consider, who really is the photographer? The only real way to know is by the username, or if someone has credited your account. The work will always be subjective in this stance, no one cares for objectivity in the world of social media and internet influence, people will always have an opinion of what they think is truly happening, in every single aspect of the word.
The author writes “Social media images represent a definitive shift in personal photographic practices where we see a foregrounding of the photographer–viewer relationship in the visual structure. ” Overall, the article has explored ideas of social media dominance, subjectivity, image and visual choices and an overall audience. It discusses photographic theory, detailing ideas of portraiture and still-life, commenting on how these images would act in the social media platforms of instagram. It also discusses the experiences of the photographer through this process.
My work currently shares ideas of this through how social media and the images represented on there have affected people personally. This can be shown through photographic choices online, personal experience and connection between the media and mental health.
Emily Ryder 