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The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media Paperback – July 21, 2020
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A set of bold theoretical reflections on how the social photo has remade our world.
With the rise of the smart phone and social media, cameras have become ubiquitous, infiltrating nearly every aspect of social life. The glowing camera screen is the lens through which many of us seek to communicate our experience. But our thinking about photography has been slow to catch-up; this major fixture of everyday life is still often treated in the terms of art or journalism.
In The Social Photo, social theorist Nathan Jurgenson develops bold new ways of understanding photography in the age of social media and the new kinds of images that have emerged: the selfie, the faux-vintage photo, the self-destructing image, the food photo. Jurgenson shows how these devices and platforms have remade the world and our understanding of ourselves within it.
- Print length144 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVerso
- Publication dateJuly 21, 2020
- Dimensions5.1 x 0.4 x 7.8 inches
- ISBN-101786635445
- ISBN-13978-1786635440
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—danah boyd, author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens
“Social photos are not primarily about making media but about sharing eyes,’ Nathan Jurgenson writes in this important and timely book. Grappling with the significance of the billions of largely ephemeral images that inhabit social media, he persuasively delineates many of the key boundaries between what was previously understood to be photography and the contemporary image environment.”
—Fred Ritchin, author of Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen
“A refreshing respite from most of the commentary streaming from our devices today.”
—Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times
“Nathan Jurgenson is the Susan Sontag of the selfie generation—a bold, lucid, and important new voice in cultural criticism. In The Social Photo, he offers a truly groundbreaking analysis of how photography has changed in the age of social media, and how it is changing us. Every page crackles with insight and intelligence.”
—Mia Fineman, Curator of Photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art and author of Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop
“The world is glutted with pictures … In The Social Photo, sociologist, media theorist, and Snapchat guru Nathan Jurgenson argues that this surfeit of images has ushered in a new way of seeing and existing in the world through our camera phones—one which no longer values the documentary function of photographs, but instead prizes their ability to expressively communicate with others.”
—Frieze
“[Jurgenson] has, for years, offered a valuable commentary on the cultural implications of social media.”
—Tank (“Summer Reads”)
“Like Susan Sontag’s On Photography, to which it self-consciously responds, The Social Photo is slim, hard-bitten and picture-free. For if the average photo is ever dumber, photography matters even more; the social photo, in Mr. Jurgenson’s phrase, has effected a ‘fusion of media and bodies’ that has made every gallerygoer a cyborg.”
—Jason Farago, New York Times (“Top Art Books of 2019”)
“Jurgenson is a good guide to our times.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“Jurgenson suggests that in today’s ocean of images, the traditional way we have looked at pictures is outdated. He suggests a new way to understand them, one that is ‘less art historical and more social theoretical.’”
—Taylor Dafoe, artnet News
“Jurgenson beautifully connects the newfound social documentary style with the history of photography and paints a picture of the similarities and differences of traditional photography and what he deems the new ‘social photos.’”
—Lauren Capraro, Communication Booknotes Quarterly
“Timely … Jurgenson puts the social photo in a broader context of photographic history in a way that should appeal to even the sniffiest critic.”
—Economist
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Verso (July 21, 2020)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 144 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1786635445
- ISBN-13 : 978-1786635440
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.1 x 0.4 x 7.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #838,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #170 in Photography Criticism & Essays (Books)
- #2,532 in Communication & Media Studies
- #2,812 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
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Chapter One is ‘Documentary Vision’. Mr. Jurgenson compares and contrasts the early years of photography with the rise of social media to reveal how technology shapes how our lives are experienced, documented and shared. He contends that the social photo should be understood as part of an expanding visual discourse where documentation of experiences is usually more important than the artistry of the image. In fact, the author says that a pervasive ‘documentary consciousness’ has compelled a growing number of us to live in service to discovering, documenting and sharing the social photo opportunity.
Chapter Two is ‘Real Life’. Mr. Jurgenson will surely be proven correct when he suggests that young people’s ‘digital dirt’ will become less discomfiting as society grows more tolerant of social media over time. Interestingly, the author believes that privacy is whatever an individual chooses to conceal and thus cannot be destroyed. The social photo simply proves that technology has made it possible for more people to become preoccupied with personal image-making than ever before.
I highly recommend this excellent book to everyone.
Reads more like an academic essay than typical non-fiction (those accustomed to lighter fare might call it "dense") but nonetheless a fantastic read. Highly recommended to anyone interested in photography, communication, and the ways in which social media is transforming art & image.