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Photographers at Work: A Sociology of Photographic Styles.
... Images serve several purposes in media coverage. Visuals are designed to accentuate the news story, supply the audience with evidentiary support regarding the truth of the reporting, and provide an additional incentive for the audience to choose one news source over another (Rosenblum, 1978). However, like journalists, news photographers (and camera people) learn how to visually represent issues and events to a broader public. ...
... However, like journalists, news photographers (and camera people) learn how to visually represent issues and events to a broader public. In visual representations of the news, the goal of media professionals is to provide standardized images that capture the essence of an issue or event (Graber, 1996;Rosenblum, 1978). Photographers, for example, adopt a formulaic aesthetic that both aligns with the "situational norms and technical characteristics" of an event and captures the event's most dramatic aspects (Rosenblum, 1978, p. 59). ...
... Photographers, for example, adopt a formulaic aesthetic that both aligns with the "situational norms and technical characteristics" of an event and captures the event's most dramatic aspects (Rosenblum, 1978, p. 59). As media professionals associate particular "shots" with specific kinds of events (e.g., protests), news visuals become homogeneous (Gans, 2003;Graber, 1996;Rosenblum, 1978). ...
Despite increased scholarly interest in how activists use visuals in claim-making and mobilization, little is known about how mainstream news media visually represent social movements and their causes over time. Given the number of studies that argue that journalistic routines, norms, and conventions create hegemonic discourse around political issues, this gap is surprising. In this article, the authors examine whether the images used to visually represent the abortion issue are homogenized. Drawing on an analysis of 2,093 print and electronic news images associated with the abortion debate, the authors find that the visuals used in media coverage are very similar. Likewise, the authors find that the most frequently shown visual landscapes for the abortion issue are relatively stable across six different kinds of events including commemorations, incidents of clinic violence, legislation, Supreme Court decisions, presidential elections, and executive nominations. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work for the study of social movements and call for more research on how visual landscapes influence audience understanding of both new and enduring issues.
... In professional photography, disparate interlocking systems hold, where the dominant arrangements fall within the narrow range of 'artisanal' to 'market professional' rather than being fully integrated into corporate production processes. While news and documentary photographers, for instance, did become salaried employees ('staff photographers') in newspapers, magazines and news agencies (Hardt and Brennen 1999;Rosenblum 1978) for a significant part of the twentieth century, this was not the sole or even the main career path available. Freelancers predominated, both at the lower end of the organizational hierarchy, but also at the higher end of prestigious assignment work, in addition to the self-organization of professionals into photography agencies such as Magnum (founded 1947) and Gamma (1966), which further enabled flexibility, the selection of assignments, and frequently the retention of copyright over images. ...
... However, any discussion of aesthetic autonomy or incorporation requires more careful reflection on the construction of 'photographic labour' itself. While the figure and actions of the photographer usually remain central to the research literature (Rosenblum 1978, Bourdieu et al. [1965] 1990, Frosh 2003a, the particular activities that might be classed as photographic labour diverge across contexts and periods, with some becoming formally established as arenas of expertise and professions in their own right, separate from the photographer's own role and varying to the extent of their subordination (either to the photographer or others). This is apparent in the formation of the studio system for the mass production of photographic portraits and cartes de visite in the nineteenth century (see Edwards 2006: 83-95), where, in both prestigious and less salubrious photography studios, labour was broken down into specialized occupations performing distinctive repetitive routines. ...
Photography scholars have long acknowledged that photography is the progeny of industrial society. However, despite the increase in historical studies of the medium’s industrial-commercial dimensions, and a smaller number of contemporary sociological and cultural investigations, no attempt has been made to produce an overall account of photography as a cultural industry. This chapter aims to help fill that gap. Moving across public and private photographic contexts, and popular and elite genres, it elaborates photography’s relation to four core problematics: the historical phases of industrial cultural production; cultural labor and economic and cultural capital; the tension between standardization and innovation; and dominant production logics of digital culture. In the process it draws upon traditions of analyzing cultural industries in media studies, the political economy of communication and the sociology of culture to rethink photography’s long-term trajectories as a modern cultural endeavor.
... However, the challenge remains. There is still very little work available on press photos' production which, unfortunately, is mainly focused on photojournalists, their confrontations and daily routines (Bock, 2008;Newton, 2001;Rosenblum, 1978) and has very little to do with the press photography labour of other picture professionals inside the news organisation. Even when the press photo was already seen as an extraordinary document that also gains its powers from the news organisation back in the 1970s (Barthes, 1977b;Hall, 1973), it was not until a few years later that research slowly shifted inside the newsroom (see, for example, Evans, 1997;Kobre, 2000 for the input of insiders). ...
... By investigating the production routines of the Keyword Team in a powerful international news agency, this article also suggests that there is a stronger connection between news pictures' production and the stock industry than had been perceived in the past (see, for example, Rosenblum, 1978), as photography genres intermesh in their production. Certain archived news pictures at Reuters are therefore set to compete with stock images, as they are designed to distance themselves from spot news images so they can be used in 6 months' time. ...
This article is about the unique word–image relations as these appear in international news production. This is achieved by analysing the labour of a particular team – the keyword team – in the news picture production routine at the powerful Thomson Reuters international news agency. By analysing the daily work of keyworders at Thomson Reuters, I explore how the word–image problem is demonstrated, and settled, in international news production. Similar to the picture categorising mechanisms in the stock business, I argue that word and image relations in news media can also be productive, serving as a cultural practice that helps extending the shelf-life of archived pictures, thus increasing news picture sales worldwide.
... Second, aspects of the camera club aesthetic have many traits of landscape, wildlife, portrait, and some advertising photographies, though there is not a direct connection between those professional practices and the practices of camera clubs. Rosenblum (1978) described separate social worlds of professional art, advertising, and photojournalist photography with different values and practices. If amateurs by definition are aligned with some professional social world, this suggests the possibility that amateur photographers outside the camera club might exist. ...
... Some users develop new ways of seeing through participation in the site. Learning to see like a photographer is a key part of taking on the role of photographer (Rosenblum 1978). Finally, Davies reports on the emergence of shared social procedures and values-an indicator of the presence of a shared social world, which can also lead to social interaction (online or off) and a sense of belongingness. ...
Serious amateur photographers are largely invisible in the literature on the management of personal photo collections. Leisure practitioners have been of little interest to researchers studying personal col-lections and the management thereof. The little that is known about leisure-related information behavior suggests that people develop and manage rich personal collections in the pursuit of serious leisure activ-ities. Further, it appears that studying these collections has high potential for advancing research in the areas of personal digital collections and personal information management (PIM). Bodies of literature exist on the character, management, and use of photo collections by a) institutions and organizations; b) casual snapshooters collecting mainly family photos; and c) unknown individuals sharing, tagging, and annotating photo collections on the Web. Amateur photographers occupying a space sharing fuzzy boundaries with each of these areas. Gaining knowledge of amateur collections and collection-related practices will begin to fill in that space. This chapter describes first steps exploring these potentials in the domain of amateur photography. The goals of the study are to answer the following research questions: 1. Is there anything new and important to learn from studying the personal collection management of amateur photographers? If so, on what aspects of their practices should next efforts focus? 2. What are the norms and expectations of the social world of photography regarding photography-related collection management? This chapter reports on preliminary analysis of a year of discussion threads from an online forum devoted to discussing collection management and digital photography workflow. Themes emerging from (permanent email).
... La necesidad de incluir el trabajo artístico como un trabajo cualquiera parte de una contradicción de clase en la medida en que los artistas participan de la explotación capitalista y dependen del reconocimiento social de sus producciones como mercancías. En este sentido, autoras como Barbara Rosenblum (1978) aplica un análisis marxista a los estilos en fotografía, y subraya que los profesionales de la fotografía están amenazados por la alienación y el fetichismo de la mercancía, no tanto por la pérdida de control de su proceso de producción, sino por el peso de la distribución, al vender su obra a un mercado con unos clientes que pueden hacer lo que quieran con ella. El proceso de digitalización actual ha diseminado este sentimiento de alienación al proceso de producción, como los mismos profesionales explican en un estudio en proceso. ...
Este texto revisa los análisis que desde la sociología se han hecho del arte. Partiendo de la idea de que la mirada sociológica hacia el arte es una mirada desconfiada, que busca desmitificar, des-esencializar y problematizar algunos de los conceptos básicos del arte (artista, genio, obra); el texto recorre diversas etapas, generaciones, paradigmas y abordajes sociológicos del arte, mostrando la amplitud de enfoques presentes en el campo.
... Amateur photography was chiefly associated with "home mode" (Chalfen, 1987) practices undertaken in private and family contexts. Professional photography, in contrast, involves meticulous working methods, expensive equipment, studios, assistants, photo agencies, clients, competitions, awards, professional associations, and established frameworks of professional training and accreditation (Frosh, 2020;Rosenblum, 1978), as well as specified venues and media for the display of professional images. ...
This paper calls for renewed critical examination of the representational practices of commercial brands on social media, in particular their appropriation and adaptation of user-generated “amateur” or “vernacular” cultural styles. It proposes that this appropriation parallels processes of professionalization, influencer culture, and self-branding on social media. Focusing empirically on the official Instagram accounts of 12 leading fashion brands, we identify three distinctive patterns: (1) Regramming: sharing and crediting users’ photographs on the brands’ official feed; (2) Vernacular celebrity: posting the amateur-style photographs of a celebrity or model associated with the brand; (3) Brandfies: selfie-style images created by corporations where the brand appears to be a “self” performing its own representation. We argue that these appropriations position brands more fully as social beings, as tech-savvy cultural amateurs familiar with platform affordances, and as physically embodied selves. Self-branding is thus systematically complemented and brought to fulfilment by brand-“selfing.”
... In the actual work of journalistic production, news outlets frame the news and look for images suitable to symbolize it (Pogliano 2009). Moreover, on the other side of the production process, photographers have an approximate idea of what the main news frames are and compose their pictures accordingly (Rosenblum 1978;Machin 2004). ...
In a “colourblind” Europe, where race talk is taboo, explicit racial resentment towards newcomers is confined to the margins. Nonetheless, a racialized understanding of immigration and asylum persists, as evidenced in the less policed realm of iconographic representation. An analysis of the association between keyword-retrieved discursive frames and 1,500 photographs in Google Image search results from the years starting with the “migrant crisis” of 2015 reveals different regimes of representation and suggests that concepts of illegality and threat are embodied in images as race. Despite the overlapping hierarchies of origins found in today’s racializing discourses, the pillars of old European racial taxonomies emerge as the prevalent codes of racialized difference in pictorial representation of a besieged Europe.
... When the process of news pictures' production is in question, such a distinction is crucial: It stands, for example, as to what distinguishes between Hall's newspapers as a unified system of production to the newsrooms that are discussed in the following chapters -the setting of endless struggles and conflicts over different variations of social power and control. Rosenblum (1978a) used ethnographic research methods to demonstrate how work organization affects style. She connected the types of social structure with photographic styles and addressed the stylistic differences between news, advertising, and fine arts photography so as to explain "[…] why each photographic style looks the way it does" (Rosenblum, 1978a, p. 5). ...
How are events turned into news pictures that define them for the audience? How do events become commodified into pictures that both capture them and reiterate the values of the agencies that sell them? This book looks at every stage of the production of news photographs as they move to and from the ground and are sold around the world. Based on extensive fieldwork at a leading international news agency that includes participant observation with photographers in the field, at the agency’s local and global picture
desks in Israel, Singapore, and the UK, in-depth interviews with pictures professionals, and observations and in-depth interviews at The Guardian’s picture desk in London, the findings in this book point to a wide cultural production infrastructure hidden from – and yet also nurtured and thus very much determined by – the consumer’s eye.
... L'évolution de la photographie de presse est à cet égard éloquente. Pendant longtemps, en confiant ses pellicules au journal, le photoreporter était dépossédé non seulement de la sélection de ses propres images, mais également du sens que la rédaction allait leur donner : les légendes étaient rédigées par des rédacteurs spécialisés, toute photographie était évaluée à sa capacité à s'intégrer au corps déjà écrit du journal(Rosenblum 1978). Les gravures tirées des photographies de Roland Bonaparte étaient déjà exemplaires de ce mode de fonctionnement, structuré par l'écriture et le sens qu'elle imposait aux images.41 ...
Once anthropologists started using them in the 19th century, portrait photographs generated a contradiction between the aim of describing the human « types » thus being visually recorded and the inevitable personalization of the photographs taken. The captions referring to a typology did not draw attention away from this distracting « noise ». Though soon abandoned by the social sciences, the use of photography was taken up by documentary photographers who tried to use portraits to compose social panoramas on the basis of apparently impeccable formal assumptions but at the price of omnipresent ambiguities. Nowadays, communication and advertising constantly use the form of identity photos to create models for being or appearing but without any real referent.
... The same holds mutatis mutandis for other categories of artists. Photographers may be employed by newspapers or advertising agencies, instead of relying on freelance earnings for 'art' photography (Rosenblum 1978). Painters are often commissioned by industrial corporations to execute works, or employed as community artists or as 'artists-in-residence' at universities (Berry 1970;Braden 1978;Dubin 1987;Mennell 1976). ...
The Psychology and Sociology of Literature is a collection of 25 chapters on literature by some of the leading psychologists, sociologists, and literary scholars in the field of the empirical study of literature. Contributors include Ziva Ben-Porat, Gerry Cupchik, Art Graesser, Rachel Giora, Norbert Groeben, Colin Martindale, David Miall, Willie van Peer, Kees van Rees, Siegfried Schmidt, Hugo Verdaasdonk, and Rolf Zwaan. Topics include literature and the reading process; the role of poetic language, metaphor, and irony; cathartic and Freudian effects; literature and creativity; the career of the literary author; literature and culture; literature and multicultural society, literature and the mass media; literature and the internet; and literature and history. An introduction by the editors situates the empirical study of literature within an academic context. The chapters are all invited and refereed contributions, collected to honor the scholarship and retirement of professor Elrud Ibsch, of the Free University of Amsterdam. Together they represent the state of the art in the empirical study of literature, a movement in literary studies which aims to produce reliable and valid scientific knowledge about literature as a means of verbal communication in its cultural context. Elrud Ibsch was one of the pioneers in Europe to promote this approach to literature some 25 years ago, and this volume takes stock of what has happened since. The Psychology and Sociology of Literature presents an invaluable overview of the results, promises, gaps, and needs of the empirical study of literature. It addresses social scientists as well as scholars in the humanities who are interested in literature as discourse.
... The news photographer represents both these professions and is doubly loathed and despised. He would therefore have to minimize his disturbing presence by wearing an appropriate hat or a modest set of clothing in an attempt to preserve the " choreography of the unobtrusive " (Rosenblum 1978: 23). For photographers then, the best news pictures are taken when they manage to see yet remain unseen. ...
What makes death-related news events internationally appealing? How is the visual coverage of grief tailored for the needs of the international market? And how are the mechanisms for such coverage operated in the field by international news agencies’ photographers? In this article, I conduct an interpretive analysis of the funeral of an Israeli officer as it was covered by an Israeli Reuters photographer and an analysis of the “picture of the event” selected for distribution by the photographer. It demonstrates how international news institutions tailor the visual coverage of a local funeral to the complex demands of the international market.
... The second is to classify the photographs by photographic genre (using Barbara Rosenblum's study) and then to make statements about them based on other information provided by the archive or on the photograph itself. Both of these methods are employed in the photo-analysis (Rosenblum, 1978;Becker Ohrn, 1980: Chapter 7). ...
This article argues that photographs can make a particular and independent contribution to historical research, but that their value is limited unless contextualized and verified using other sources. A comparative study of Saint-Henri, Quebec and Lowell, Massachusetts employs historical photo-analysis to discern shifting patterns in transportation and sociability on early 20th- century North American city streets. Specific class and gender transformations were tied to the advent of the department store and to the introduction of municipal policies restricting commercial and 'inappropriate' activities in the first decade, to a significant rise in tram use after World War I, and to restricted automobile travel in the interwar period. The comparative and visual methodology reveals a gradual decline accompanied by increasing segregation in the social usage of commercial and residential streets during this period.
... Por lo que se refiere a la actividad fotográfica tenida por objeto de investigación sociológica, ha de distinguirse entre la actividad profesional y la vernácula. Respecto a la primera, el trabajo sociológico se centra en las prácticas profesionales, atendiendo tanto a la división técnica del trabajo como a la organización social de la profesión y a su configuración del mercado, acompañando a -en vez de acompañándose porphotographers at work, tal y como Bárbara Rosenblum (1943Rosenblum ( -1988 hiciera en su ya clásica (aunque poco recordada) etnografía de la producción fotográfica de "estilo" periodístico, publicitario y artístico (Rosenblum, 1978), apuntada ya en su subtítulo: a sociology of photographic styles. Y respecto a la segunda variante de la actividad fotográfica ajena, vernácula en lugar de profesional, no podemos dejar de retomar en estas páginas el trabajo sociológico realizado por Pierre Bourdieu (1930Bourdieu ( -2002 acerca de la actividad corriente de la fotografía. ...
RESUMEN:
A pesar de la prevalencia de las imágenes en nuestra cultura, la sociología ha tardado mucho en trabajar con ellas. La mirada sociológica es un lugar común, pero sus maneras de mirar apenas tiene en cuenta a la fotografía. Desde hace algún tiempo, los trabajos fotográficos de sociólogos visuales (como Harper o Becker) han reintroducido en la disciplina el desdeñado arte de fotografiar. Con anterioridad, pocos son los sociólogos que trabajaron con la cámara; en este artículo se describen algunos de estos casos (Halbwachs, Bourdieu...), tratando de dar cuenta de por qué no suelen tomarse en consideración en términos ni de teoría sociológica ni de investigación social. Particularmente interesante es el caso de Lewis W . Hine, quien plantea la pertinencia sociológica de escribir con luz para componer textos verbo-visuales.
Palabras claves: mirada sociológica, fotografía, metaforización, textos verbovisuales.
ABSTRACT:
Despite the dominance of images in our culture, sociology has been slow to work with them. The sociological gaze is a commonplace, but its usual ways of seeing have not envisaged photography. Some time ago, the photographic works of visual sociologists (such as Harper and Becker) reintroduced into the discipline the neglected art of making photographs. Previously, few sociologists worked with the camera; this article describes some of these cases (Halbwachs, Bourdieu...), explaining why they have not received recognition in either sociological theory or social research. Of particular interest is the case of Lewis W. Hine, which suggests the sociological pertinence of writing with light to compose verbo-visual texts.
Keywords: sociological gaze, photography, metaphorization, verbo-visual texts
... Domke et al. (2002) afirmam que, embora a pesquisa sobre o papel da fotografia no jornal esteja bem desenvolvida (Garcia e Stark in Domke et al., 2002, p. 2), investigações sistemáticas sobre a influência real das imagens na notícia não são tão comuns (Domke et al., 2002, p. 2). De maneira geral, os estudos sobre fotojornalismo focalizam-se ou na avaliação das imagens propriamente ditas (Griffin e Lee; Kenney; Lucaites; Woo in Domke et al., 2002), ou os contextos de sua produção (Rosenblum, 1978). Quase nunca se dá atenção aos efeitos nas audiências ou ao seu papel no produto final, que é o jornal. ...
... Rather, he is expected to use technical expertise to resolve an art director's conceptual difficulties and to add his own inimitable style to the images that he takes for the advertising campaign on which he is working, while taking into account the constraints imposed by the client's brand. Although a photographer's work is evaluated according to his ability to find 'the solution to a technical problem for which there are no standardized solutions' (Rosenblum, 1978b: 84) -as in when he uses Vaseline on a sheet of plate glass to simulate rain blobs -his creativity is also judged by his stylistic inputs. ...
This article makes use of the results of ethnographic participant observation to analyze how creativity is organized in the production of Japanese advertising. An ad campaign, like many other creative products, is produced by `motley crews' of personnel from both within an agency contracted to conceptualize the campaign on behalf of its client (an account team) and freelance professionals hired to realize the account team's creative concept (a production team). The concepts of frame analysis and art worlds are used to analyze the symbolic space of the studio and the transformations that occur there, while that of field enables a comparative analysis of advertising's `space of possibles' in which different actors position themselves and their clients' products. Creativity is used to establish relations of power among advertising personnel, as well as over consumers, by means of the constant (re)positioning of advertisers' products. This is the function of advertising's motley crew.
Photography has been pivotal in culture for decades and its importance has increased with the rise of digital technology. However, the exploration of picture taking within the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community does not seem to match its cultural and technological significance. Recognizing this discrepancy, we sought to understand areas of interest in photography as a conscious creative process. To address this issue, we performed a systematic literature review using the PRISMA methodology. From our research, we identified 62 pertinent papers spanning from 2005 to 2022. Our examination revealed six primary dimensions, further classified into study type, design goal, photo-taking style, device type, interaction style, and number of users. In-depth analysis showed the dominant role of exploratory and functional research, the balance between qualitative and quantitative methods, and a strong focus on smartphone cameras. Our review has highlighted significant gaps in the existing literature, offering valuable insights for future research on photo taking.
In histories of photography, the notion of 'seeing photographically' is associated with so-called 'straight' photographers such as Edward Weston. It means to train the human-camera eye-to 'previsualise'-by conforming to the conditions of what Vilém Flusser calls the "photographic program". At the same time, seeing photographically is a constant dynamic between a protean technical practice and aesthetic conventions or styles. This paper revisits the notion of seeing photographically to contextualise how notions of photographic style operate in generative imaging practices and AI discourse. We argue that since not only photorealism but the look of photographs from any period or style can be generated with the right combination of prompts and parameters, it has become possible to 'previsualise' and 'see photographically' by treating the history of photography as a style market. The concept of 'style', outdated in art history, becomes newly important and photography becomes a memory to be evoked in ahistorical stylistic evocations.
El fotoperiodismo moderno está erigido en torno al “mito del reportero de guerra”, construcción que hace difícil visualizar a las mujeres. Este artículo rescata el nombre de cuatro fotoperiodistas vascas, únicas mujeres en la prensa local en una época marcada por la banda terrorista ETA. Mediante entrevistas en profundidad, el artículo se acerca a las condiciones de producción de su trabajo, atravesado por el conflicto vasco, los cambios de códigos gráficos en el periodismo visual y su propia experiencia como mujeres.
Der Fotojournalismus ist im Umbruch. Unter den Bedingungen der Digitalisierung hat sich auch dieses Berufsfeld spätestens seit dem Jahr 2000 massiv verändert: professionelle fotojournalistischer Arbeitsfelder erodieren, Arbeitsplätze und -möglichkeiten werden prekär oder gehen verloren und im Wandel fotojournalistischer Arbeitsroutinen dringen auch nicht-professionelle Quellen zunehmend in die Medien ein. Den Krisenphänomenen begegnet das Berufsfeld auf ganz unterschiedliche Weise: mit einer Selbstvergewisserung oder Neubestimmung der professionellen Identität und Standards sowie der Entwicklung innovativer Konzepte, neuer Formen des Fotografierens, visuellen Erzählens und multimedialen Publizierens. Auch das ökonomische und kulturelle Agieren der Fotojournalist*innen ist zunehmend von Risiken geprägt, die neue Formen der Kollaboration und das Ausprobieren neuer Geschäftsmodelle erfordern.
Diesen Wandel des fotojournalistischen Berufsfeldes und seine Folgen für die journalistisch Bildkommunikation beschreiben, analysieren und diskutieren 14 Autor*innen in dem von Elke Grittmann und Felix Koltermann herausgegebenen Band „Fotojournalismus im Umbruch“. Der Band legt den Fokus auf die Phänomene der Entgrenzung, die infolge der Digitalisierungsprozesse zu beobachten sind: sei es hinsichtlich der Formate und Produktionsweisen als auch hinsichtlich der Auftraggeber*innen und Organisationformen. Die Beiträger*innen greifen diese Veränderungen unter den drei Schlagwörtern ‚Hybridisierung‘, ‚Multimedialisierung‘ und ‚Prekarisierung‘ auf, um sich dem Fotojournalismus im Umbruch zu widmen.
In der Kombination von Fachbeiträgen und Interviews mit Expert*innen aus der Praxis bietet der Band aus wissenschaftlicher wie berufspraktischer Perspektive eine kritische Reflexion des fotojournalistischen Berufsfeldes. Er verbindet damit die Debatten innerhalb der Profession mit den theoretischen und empirischen Erkenntnissen der Visuellen Kommunikationsforschung, der Fotografieforschung und der Fotojournalismusforschung und trägt damit zur aktuellen Diskussion über die Transformation des Journalismus und Fotojournalismus bei.
Mit Beiträgen von Lars Bauernschmitt, Winfried Gerling, Alexander Godulla, Elke Grittmann, Sophia Greiff, Thomas Horky, Felix Koltermann, Robin Meyer, Dorothe Lanc, Rosanna Planer, Evelyn Runge, Florian Sturm, Michaela Zöhrer und Miriam Zlobinski
Elke Grittmann / Felix Koltermann (Hrsg.): Fotojournalismus im Umbruch. Hybrid, multimedial, prekär, Halem Verlag 2022, Broschur, 213 x 142 mm, dt., 35,00 EUR, ISBN 978-3-86962-559-1
Recent studies have shed light on the masculine nature of the doxa that underpins the field of photography. Other studies have explored the patterns of inequity faced by local-foreign photographers in the Global South who straddle a transnational field of photography within which actors from the Global North and South collaborate but residual economic and symbolic power remain with agents and institutions centred in the Global North. This study draws upon and extends both these lines of inquiry through exploring the professional experiences of 20 female-identifying photographers based in 18 countries across four different geo-cultural regions in the Global South. The article discusses their experiences of marginalisation as marked by three broader themes: precarity, isolation and invisibility/partial visibility. Through this, the article highlights how the gender-based exclusions shown to be inherent in the doxa of national fields of photography may be understood to be additionally intersected by geo-cultural exclusions in what is recognised as cosmopolitan capital within the doxa of local-foreign photographic practice.
Resim gerçekliği kopya etme telaşından sıyrılarak, kendine yeni diller yaratma çabasına girerken, fotoğraf ise resme öykünme ve onun gibi olma sevdasını, kendi mekanik üretim dinamiklerini keşfetmeye başladığında bırakmıştır. Sanat dünyasına girmeyi başaran fotoğraf, milyon dolarlık müzayedelerde, koleksiyonerlerin gözdelerine dönüşmüştür. Fotoğraf, sanat AŞ’nin elinden tüketim dünyasına yani reklam piyasasına atlamış ve insanın içindeki arzuyu gidermek ve arzunun yarattığı boşluğu tamamlamak için hayali ve fantastik bir dünya kurmanın yollarını, satılabilecek her şeyi estetize ederek çizmiştir. Günümüzde ise fotografik imgeler dijitalleşmiş (post-fotoğraf), kendine yeni mecralar ve diller yaratmıştır. Bu mecralardan biri olan Stok fotoğraf ajansları, fotoğrafçısına bir ‘nickname-kullanıcı adı’, fotoğrafa ise 1 dolar fiyat biçerek, dünyanın hiç gitmediğiniz bir ülkesinde fotoğrafınızı kredi kartı ya da tişörtlerde görebilme ihtimalinizi arttırmıştır.
A recent British trend has been the growth in HE photography courses with a concurrent emphasis on industry skills and commercial career outcomes. And, although pedagogic approaches to practical material have adapted, the theoretical material can be seen to be woefully lacking. Calls for a re-examination have indeed been made, but little has been offered that is not simply a rearticulation of the already dominant theoretical models. Rather than relying on the well-trodden models that promote photographer as visionary or emphasise meaning generation, it is proposed that photography theory should look to the breadth of approaches found in film studies, particularly in relation to commercial production. The two areas for development particularly advocated here are genre studies and industry analysis in terms of production and distribution. Since most commercially bound photographers work within industrial structures and constraints, both of these approaches would facilitate an understanding of creativity and innovation in this context. This would open up areas of photographic study that have thus far been largely ignored by academics and, further, would facilitate a closer relationship and dialogue between theory and practice in the educational context.
New work relations in the digital world
The digital revolution is often seen as an essentially technological event. It has indeed transformed the equipment used and has profoundly affected the way in which photographers, as image professionals, work. But it has also had significant repercussions on cooperative relationships, on relations with those who commission the work, and therefore on the organization of work itself. This article explores this more social aspect of the shift to digital, based on data from a survey carried out from 2010 to 2012 on photographers and their professional partners. It shows that technological tools have accentuated the power that principals have over their service providers, in the wake of economic changes initiated in the 1990s.
Resumen:Trabajar sociológicamente con fotografías y sobre fotografías nos invita a abordar las representaciones, prácticas y discursos sociales, pero asumiendo los discursos, las prácticas y representaciones de la propia sociología al respecto. En el presente artículo se plantea un breve recorrido por la inconstante relación mantenida durante casi dos siglos entre sociología y fotografía, rastreando no sólo los vestigios sino también las lagunas que le son características. A lo largo de estas páginas se pretende poner en perspectiva la incorporación de la producción fotográfica, como objeto y como práctica, por parte de la investigación social cualitativa de orientación sociológica; dejando de lado, en este caso, las incorporaciones de la sociología por parte de la fotografía.
Abstract:
Working sociologically with fotographies and about fotographies invites us to approach the representations, practices and social discourses, but asuming the sociological discourses, practices and representations on the issue. In this article a short review is raised through the fickle relation maintained during almost two centuries between sociology and fotography, tracing not only the vestiges but also it's characteristical blanks. Throughout these pages we aim to put into perspective the addition of the photographical production, as object and as practice, by the sociologically oriented qualitative social research; set aside the additions of sociology by photography in this case.
Palabras clave:
imaginería sociológica; imaginarios; socio-fotografía; sociología visual; investigación social cualitativa
Keywords:
Sociological Imagery; Imaginary; Social Photography; Visual Sociology; Qualitative Social Research
Social solidarity and group identity are not givens; at particular times they must be intentionally cultivated and concretely enacted. What I have termed visual onomatopoeia assembles large numbers of individuals into group insignias, emblems, or other significant symbols. The subsequent artistic or photographic record of such displays is tangible evidence of a group's existence—who comprises it and how it sees itself. It thereby operates as both act and artifact. Like its verbal counterpart, visual onomatopoeia communicates through a close equivalence between a subject and its representation. It frames experience in a distinctive manner by objectifying the group, which ordinarily is only vaguely conceptualized. “Living photographs” of religious and patriotic subjects (e.g., 18,000 men configured as the Statue of Liberty) were executed by the team of Mole and Thomas and E. O. Goldbeck between 1913 and 1971. From a Durkheimian perspective, such images could be an important device for mobilizing allegiance. But by adopting a Goffmanian perspective, we additionally learn that there is affective deviance from affirmative social rituals: participants were not as fully engaged as their organizers might have desired. Additional examples from the mass media (e.g., advertising, news reports) demonstrate the metaphoric use of this device and attest to the subtle pervasiveness of this way of representing social life.
Reviewing past research on news and mass media, this article charges it is “administrative” research which accepts the presuppositions of the media being studied, particularly their emphasis on “facts” as discrete and objective phenomena. It also suggests that there are epistemological problems implicit in such concepts as “bias” and “refraction” used in gate-keeping studies. The article offers an alternative paradigm, described as “serious work on the sociology of knowledge as a junction with the sociologies of organizations and occupations and professions.” Some studies using that paradigm are described.
Describes a first exercise in photojournalism and discusses how it can introduce students to such central issues as the rules of composition, the methods of editing, the ethics of dealing with subjects, and the role of the process in politics and culture. (SR)
The aim of this study is to understand and explain what I shall call aesthetic markets. A particular market of this kind is analysed, namely the market for fashion photography in Sweden. To understand and analyze a market from a sociological perspective, I argue, one primarily needs to perceive the construction of meaning within the market. The actors in this specific market construct what may be called 'aesthetic values'. The market also distributes status of identities as a result of the interactions between producers and consumers. Photographers develop personal styles, and when a style intersects with status an identity is constructed in the market. The status distribution also structures the prices in the market. The conclusion of the article is that aesthetic markets can be conceptualized as status distributors of identities. The conclusion also suggests that this approach to aesthetic markets may be useful for studies of other markets as well.
Cultural forms gain artistic recognition when their producers of meaning “prove” that they (a) contain “serious” meanings and aesthetic genuineness; (b) they are produced by a definable creative entity and (c) the creative entity is autonomous, producing its works for their own sake. Since the 1960's, critics have claimed artistic recognition for rock music. They have done so by stressing the “subversive” meaning of rock, by identifying the rock-group and the rock individual-musician as autonomous creative entities, by consecrating a body of albums as the “masterpieces” of rock and by defining several sonic components as rock's genuine aesthetic language. Although the realization of this claim remains partial, it demonstrates that the belief in artistic cultural hierarchies is a structuring force in contemporary culture.
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