Technologies of memory: practices of remembering in analogue and digital photography

This article demonstrates the need always to consider change against continuity and continuity against change in the analysis of mnemonic technologies. It does so by exploring what has happened in the move from analogue to digital photography, looking in particular at how this has affected the meanings of personal photographs and the practices of remembering associated with them. In contrast with technologically determinist perspectives which have been, however latently, manifest in writing on new media, the value of exploring vernacular photography as a specifically mnemonic practice is that it turns our attention to the ways in which photographic practices are bound up with longer-term social uses and cultural values. Our analysis focuses on changes in four key categories of photographic practice that relate to the analogue/digital shift: photo-taking; photo-storing; photo-viewing; photo-sharing – all of which have consequences for the uses of photography as a mnemonic resource. They have all been altered in varying degrees by the advent of digital technologies, but with people continually making comparative evaluations of old and new, drawing on the former as a key aspect of learning how to use the latter

Traces of violence: Representing the atrocities of war

This article explores the relationships between war and representation through the use of visual images, and takes a cue from the French cultural theorist Paul Virilio, who has written extensively on the militarization of vision in ways that have yet to be fully recognized in criminology. It then outlines some of the disputes surrounding documentary photography, not least since one of the main factors driving the development of the medium was the desire to record warfare, before turning to recent efforts to reconfigure the violence of representation by focusing on what has been termed ‘aftermath photography’, where practitioners deliberately adopt an anti-reportage position, slowing down the image-making process and arriving well after the decisive moment. This more contemplative strategy challenges the oversimplification of much photojournalism and the article concludes by reflecting on how military-turned-consumer technologies are structuring our everyday lives in more and more pervasive ways

Aesthetics of protest: An examination of the photojournalistic approach to protest imagery

Images of protests and demonstrations are crucial to both social movements and protesters who wish to communicate their identity and their messages to wider audiences. However, the photographing of such political events by press photographers is a complex process. The current analysis focuses on questions of aesthetics surrounding issues of visuality regarding protests and demonstrations. Based on empirical data from 17 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Greek photojournalists, this paper examines what is photographed during a protest and how this is affected by the photojournalists’ aesthetic criteria. Drawing on scholarly work on photojournalism (Ritchin and Åker) and photography (Sontag), this article discusses that besides the presumption in the principal of recording reality, photojournalists’ practice is also infused with subjective language and influenced by art photographers’ techniques. Thereupon, the main argument of this paper is that the employment of hybridized photographing practices by photojournalists can have an impact upon their visual decisions with regard to what and how is photographed during a protest. The product of such practices is usually high quality, captivating images with apparent affective qualities

Re-imagining human rights photography: Ariella Azoulays intervention

Gormley and Allan focus on several pertinent theoretical contributions made by Ariella Azoulay that invite a radical rethinking of familiar assumptions regarding human rights photography. Having established a conceptual basis, they proceed to analyse several examples of photojournalists attempting to ‘activate’ viewers by inviting them to co-create photographic narratives via methods of hypertext and online archival interaction, and of International Non Governmental Organisations (INGOs) working to create projects which ‘speak’ to viewers by involving the children they seek to represent in the production of photography. It is argued that in taking up Azoulay’s call to rethink public relationships to human rights imagery, these projects represent progressive steps towards addressing the multifarious inequalities at stake. At the same time, however, realising this potential depends on making good the promise of rendering visible the normative ideals of human rights

(Extra)ordinary portraits: Self-representation, public culture and the contemporary British soldier

This article explores the contemporary image of the British soldier, especially where the opportunity for soldiers to tell their own stories is highlighted as the core justification in the presentation of co-produced materials. We consider the particular generic affordances, constraints, and aesthetics of two recent projects, Our War (BBC 3) and War Story (Imperial War Museum), both of which hope to offer a ‘direct’ insight into soldiers’ experiences in Afghanistan, albeit through the lenses of public institutions which inevitably come with their own interpretive frameworks. At the heart of the study are the concept of self-representation and the idea of the portrait. We examine recurrent themes, styles of portrayal, and notable absences, asking, for example: how do the different dimensions of mediation constitute the soldiers as ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’? We argue that it is theoretically and empirically productive to analyse the two projects together as interconnected forms of a ‘genre of self-representation’