The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media by Nathan Jurgenson

Author:Nathan Jurgenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2019-04-28T23:00:00+00:00

I think that people are constantly thinking about capturing things that they’re not actually present for the moment they’re trying to capture. I’m quite sure of this. I think it’s insane how many pictures have to be taken these days. We have to realize there’s a level of documentation that’s just chatter, it’s noise.35

This sort of dismissal has a long history, and implies that the voices using a new medium should be excluded. Writing my own thoughts in this paper book is important and healthy, but your posts aren’t “real” communication and your selfie is deranged narcissism. We shouldn’t be in the business of ranking whose experience gets to count.

Think of a time when you held a camera and took photos during a trip and then, if you can, think of a time you went somewhere interesting without taking pictures: the experience is at least slightly different, some might claim radically different.

This is a central question provoked by social photos: not whether social photos are well composed or even accurate, but whether one’s conscious experience remains “true” despite documentary artifice. Are we still “in the moment” when the moment is so constantly being put to work for other ends, in other moments? The idea that digital connection is unhealthy and less real runs parallel to the claim that the social photo pulls us out of reality. The worry is that the ubiquity of social photography threatens our ability to really live in the moment.

But what is “the moment” and what does it mean to be “in” it? Are those documenting the moment themselves in the moment? Photography has long been about moments, most famously Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment”—when the shutter opens to capture one out of an infinite number of possible shots.36 Philosopher Erich Fromm’s critique of the tourist gaze captures the sense of danger that documentation poses to “real experience”:

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