Digital Photography As Sociotechnical Aesthetics: The Case Of The Iphoneography

Abstract

The following paper presents the beginning of a research agenda that emerges as a project of redefining photography, from Social Sciences, as an object of study beyond its representational or semiotic character. The purpose of this text, then, extends and builds on the result of the study of photographic practices using ethnographic methodology. This article is divided into three parts: First, the article presents the theoretical framework used to develop our approach to photography, which question photography as representation, and reformulates its materiality, its uses and technologies so as to define photography as a socio-technical network which appears in certain practices. The second part describes the relationship between photography and the establishment of an aesthetic proposal through its constituent practices, so as to focus on Iphoneography. Finally, the third part organizes a series of future questions, rather than conclusions, proposed as the beginning of the mentioned start of our research agenda.