Between exhibition and contemplation: exposing everyday entanglements within two online photography sites.

Forrest, Eve; Hall, Hazel

Abstract

Why do we still have a powerful compulsion to show our pictures to each another? Ever since visiting guests popped their Cartes-de-Visites in the Victorian parlour tray, there has always been a need to share our own photographs with others. Whether displayed behind plastic in personal albums, behind glass in frames and on walls, upon screens within phones and computers or on paper, lovingly thumbed in our wallets; photographs are the most personal of items that we display for others to look at. The most recent extension of this exhibition space is the online photography site, where for the last 10 years or so members have been sharing their pictures to a worldwide audience, to strangers as well as friends. This paper will consider some of the ways in which two contrasting online spaces (Blipfoto and Flickr) are both constructed and explored by users and how the performance of photography further extends into different forms of display online. Taking a broadly philosophical approach, this work will borrow extensively from the conceptual vocabulary of anthropologist Tim Ingold (2000, 2008). His ideas on everyday movement and entanglements are used as a starting point to consider more deeply how users habitually interact within various different environments. Writing about dwelling and perception in everyday life, Ingold (2000:229-230) proposes that ‘knowledge is cultivated along paths… and that people’s knowledge of the environment undergoes continuous formation is the very course of them moving about in it.’ When considering movement in photography-based virtual places, this paper argues that Ingold’s vocabulary is useful because it fits the inherent non-linear structure of Flickr and Blipfoto and the wandering of its users across various digital terrains. Ingold’s notion of ‘the meshwork’ (2008) is also examined in more depth: a concept that has also been used by Pink (2011) to examine further the relationship between movement and everyday photography. Ingold believes that the dominance of networks (where the emphasis is put on the direct connections between people and things) is flawed. Instead he insists the habitation along the trails of everyday life is messier than simple straight connecting lines, and is more akin to a knotted meshwork of lines. In this paper the work of Ingold is applied to online photography sites as a way of considering their continued power and role within the everyday lives of its members. Using interviews with users of both sites, it is hoped that new perspectives can be formed on why these places continue to remain popular. No two photography sites are the same, and the spaces of Blipfoto and Flickr will not be directly compared: instead they will be explored separately as sites of contemplation, exhibition, movement and habitation.

Citation

Forrest, E., & Hall, H. (2014, March). Between exhibition and contemplation: exposing everyday entanglements within two online photography sites. Paper presented at Helsinki Photomedia 2014

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Helsinki Photomedia 2014
• Start Date: Mar 26, 2014
• End Date: Mar 28, 2014
• Publication Date: 2014
• Deposit Date: Apr 11, 2014
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Photography; photographic display; exhibitions; online photography site; Blipfoto; Flickr
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/6643