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A sack in the sand: Photography in the age of information

Lister, Martin

Authors

Martin Lister



Abstract

Throughout the 1990s the relationship between culture and technology was sharply focused in a debate about whether digital technologies signalled the death or radical displacement of photography. The case for the cultural continuity of photography centred upon a rejection of a strong form of technological determinism. It is now clear that far from being displaced to the margins of culture, there is now more photography than ever. There have also been dramatic developments: mobile phone manufacturers have put more cameras into people's hands then ever before; the photograph as social document and historical witness persists but in changing ways; photographs circulate globally on an unprecedented scale via electronic image banks. It is clear that such changes and developments do involve new technologies. However, rather than being due to the kind of technological determinism debated earlier, this is because photography has come to exist within a new technological environment. In many recent accounts, 'information' and information technology are repeatedly cited as constituting a new and shaping context for photographic practices. This article offers a conceptual framework for thinking about these changes by relating tendencies in contemporary discussions of photography to another discourse and another set of practices: informatics. Copyright © 2007 Sage Publications.

Citation

Lister, M. (2007). A sack in the sand: Photography in the age of information. Convergence, 13(3), 251-274. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856507079176

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Dec 1, 2007
Journal Convergence
Print ISSN 1354-8565
Electronic ISSN 1748-7382
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Not Peer Reviewed
Volume 13
Issue 3
Pages 251-274
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856507079176
Keywords digital imaging, informatics, information, inscription, material, photography, signification, technological determinism, virtual
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1025988
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354856507079176
Additional Information Additional Information : This article arose from several requests, internationally, for Lister to take stock of his 'Introductory Essay' to The Photographic Image in Digital Culture (published by Routledge in 1995, and still in print) and so was developed through a number of conference papers. These include a keynote paper delivered at the Nordic Network for the History and Aesthetics of Photography conference: 'Photographic history as cultural history: new tendencies and approaches in academic research', Sophienberg, 2004, an invited paper for the Society for Photographic Education's 43rd National Conference �A New Pluralism: Photography's Future', Chicago, 2006, and a keynote paper delivered to the conference of the EU funded IPRN (International Photography Research Network) Conference 'SHIFTS: Archives in Dialogue and New Identities in Documentarism' at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.