framing photography

questions i've recently come to think about as central to my work on photographic practice by everyday folk include:

• what do we think we're doing when we make photos to share on Facebook, Flickr, or similar social media?
• what motivates someone to make images either truthfully, authoritatively, ironically, playfully, or with some other value system in mind? how does one know when or why to make images of one kind and not another? what factors contribute to that decision-making process?
  
• what factors, social, economic, or otherwise, deter people from making images in certain capacities, or from making images at all?
  
• what cultural narratives (such as those around art, science, journalism, etc.) contribute to motivating, and what to deterring, people's photographic image production?

although i think there is still rich work to be done with analysis of specific images and forms of imagery, it seems that there's still a paucity of understanding around how we come to images and make sense of them—whether we're materially making them ourselves, or symbolically taking their meaning from others.

for me, social media might play a significant role in understanding personal, interpersonal, and social behaviours surrounding how visual imagery, including photographs, are activated in everyday life. then again, and with wary attention focused squarely on the term "behaviour" and its connotations of effects-laden psychological theory, social media may not be of help at all.

still, with increasingly more individuals centering formerly isolated and private "home mode" communicative practices on networked spaces like those Facebook and Flickr provide, there must be some conclusions that can be drawn about how one makes these photos, how one makes them make sense, and where that leaves us as a society.

camera austria - online photography journal, free access

an interesting contemporary photography journal, camera austria seems to offer all their articles in English as well as in German.

here's a link to their archive, all freely accessible:
http://www.camera-austria.at/ca_archiv.cfm

getting back to it...

after quite a break, i feel like i'm going to have some time to do some creative projects over the summer.

as of the fall, i'll be starting my PhD in Communications/Cultural Studies at Ryerson/York here in Toronto. coursework, teaching, and/or teaching assisting aside, i hope to be in the darkroom and at the keyboard creating worlds of delight once again.

time will tell. in the meantime, i have a few blog entries i'd drafting up about technology and etiquette... essentially about the unwritten rules of society as applied to things technological (and what, today, isn't even partly technological?? big fun...)