Photography in Social Networks

<p>Social Networks are a firmly established 900-lb gorilla presence in the webscape. They seem to be rapidly evolving into new forms, with Facebook reportedly losing 6 million US users recently. The photography in them is likewise rapidly morphing. What role does photography play in this context? How would you describe the photography you are seeing there?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>How would you describe the photography you are seeing there?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Poorly lit poorly composed worthless crap.</p>

 

<p>I know some great photographers posting on FB, some for marketing, some for sharing. It just takes looking. And it's far better to see someone showing a photo, regardless of what someone else thinks about, than not showing anything. There's plenty there if you want it. It may not be high res, but you can usually find stuff and then go out through the links.</p>

<p>The loss of people in the US is not necessarily a huge thing. They saturated the market and some people have pulled out because they said too much, or weren't using it.</p>

<p>There are many amazing photographers on Facebook, but I think it's not a good platform for photo sharing. Small, lo-res, resized/resampled photos, and that weird javascript interface for viewing them bug me. Sure, it's great for that shot of your baby granddaughter eating cheerios or whatever, but not for showing serious work. The pros and other good photographers know this and provide links to their website, flickr, blog, etc.</p>

<p>Maybe it's just me, but a couple of years ago my friends were posting like crazy. Now, there are only a couple of actual friends posting anything, and facebook has become, for me, mostly a place to get mini press releases from music groups, political causes, television shows, events, etc.<br /> Not to mention that almost everyone I know has locked down their page as much as they can, and removed almost all their personal information. I feel bad when someone from school shows up and sends a friend request, because they really missed out on its heyday a while back.</p>

<p>Maybe Facebook as a social thing will jump the shark like MySpace did. Maybe it will evolve into something else for others like it did for me. Tumblr (social microblog platform) and 500pix (social photo network, something like flickr with a "wall") seem to be the two new players out there. With google+ (a facebook clone that touts privacy) showing up this week, it's anyone's guess where this will go.</p>

<p><br /><br /></p>

<blockquote>

<p>Poorly lit poorly composed worthless crap.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Geez, Walt, don't mince words; tell us what you really think.<br>

I tend to agree, but as others have said, there is some really good stuff, too.</p>

<p>My post was not exclusively about professionals on Facebook, but <em>the use of photographs </em>on Facebook by the majority of its users, who aren't pros promoting themselves or sharing.</p>

<p>Facebook is very much a common-man's blog. Brief messages about what's up in people's lives.</p>

<p>As such, the quality, and use of, photography on FB covers a very wide spectrum. I post my own stuff there, which can be anything from Widelux panoramic images to modern digital, to hand-drawn sketches that are then scanned in, to historical stuff from my archives.</p>

<p>Other FB subscribers do much the same, to the best of their ability, posting anything from cheap blurry cellphone photos, to photos scanned from high school yearbooks or family photo albums, to historic photos. But since it's not primarily a photo-sharing website, the quality level is a bit lower than on Flick'r or P'net or similar, IMO.</p>

<p>What's Facebook?</p>

<p>Since digicams and DSLRs can now post directly to Facebook, sharing both videos and audio, still photography is becoming less important. In fact, recent iPad-generated prints I've just received tell me that "cameras" are declining into trophies of our uncles. HP's just-relased Pad will take that dynamic even further.</p>

<p>IMO this homoginization of images is a good thing. Photography per se is equivalent to ballpoint pen operation so it's good to see it blurring respectfully into the background, not insisting that it's "art." </p>

<p>The good stuff, whatever that might be, some of it anyway, will always attract attention. If not, so what?</p>

<p>Facebook is increasingly used for marketing by everybody with anything to sell, as well as for personal connections (for which Twitter may be better). Less trouble than websites, less pretentious. Its "value" will vanish with some new format.</p>

<p>I avoid it, being more interested in face-to-face with actual humans and in their actual hang-it-on-the-wall prints.</p>

<p>I don't know why anyone who cares about the copyrights of their photos would post it on Facebook with Terms of Service like theirs. To paraphrase; ... all of the content you’ve ever uploaded on Facebook can be used, modified or even sublicensed by Facebook in every possible way – even if you quit the service.</p>

<p>Peter</p>

<blockquote>

<p>all of the content you’ve ever uploaded on Facebook can be used, modified or even sublicensed by Facebook in every possible way – even if you quit the service.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I recommend you read their terms.</p>

<p>Ok, fair enough. I read the terms and found this...</p>

<p>"For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."</p>

<p>I'm not saying that I'm right and you're wrong in trying to comprehend their TOS, and they do say, farther down in the Terms, that they won't give your photos to advertisers, but that doesn't negate their previous statement that by posting photos you grant them all of the above.</p>

<p>I would actually be happy to find out that I'm wrong. I don't use Facebook, but I might if I felt better about the terms.</p>

<p>For example, I didn't see anywhere in the terms that they couldn't, if they wanted to, produce a coffee table book with your photos, and sell it for profit.</p>

<p>Peter</p>

<p>Luis, good question especially considering the non-professional photographers on facebook. Being one of their billion members (and no pro), I post also quite some photos there. They have fairly little overlap with what I upload here, or on my website. Because they serve a different function.</p>

<p>It's easy to dismiss those photos as badly made photographs. From a technical viewpoint, artistic viewpoint or as a historical importance, they are bad. Who cares? They never needed to be good: they maintain a memory, a moment. They make people remember something, some one, some event. For those photos to be good, they have to trigger that emotion. Low bar to jump over? Again,who cares. If they convey the spirit of the moment, they're great photos.<br>

As more serious photographers, we could judge those photos till the end of days, but it's just not the point. Snapshots as these have been around for years and years. Social networks simplify the sharing of those, and sharing is the main thing these photos were meant for. You could say for a large part of photography, social networks are a blessing.</p>

<p><em>(whether social networks themselves are all that great is another discussion all together, though)</em></p>

<p>Peter - The TOS say this (you even quoted it):</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account</p>

</blockquote>

<p>which directly contradicts your earlier statement:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p> all of the content you’ve ever uploaded on Facebook can be used, modified or even sublicensed by Facebook in every possible way – even if you quit the service.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I did see that. There is a difference though between quitting, and deleting your account, and that is mentioned also in the ToC. I registered a year or more ago to see what it was all about after I got invited to be a friend, but I never uploaded anything or even used my account, so I just "quit". If I had uploaded content it would still be there for Facebook to do with it what they want. If I would take the extra step to delete my account, then the license would end.</p>

<p>Peter</p>

<p>Wouter, it seems obvious that the photographs non-pro regular FB users are using on FB are independent from the conventional Jurassic photographic aesthetic. The photographs there, if we can get beyond the "Good/Bad" and "They don't think like me therefore they're wrong, incompetent, and/or or mentally ill" lines of thought, what are we seeing going on with these pictures? Specially in relation to what is going on in FB?</p>

<p>Luis, it's a multi-faceted question, so just some lines of thoughts while the photos of yesterday evening (nice night out) are uploading to facebook....</p>

<p>I think sharing really is the key word; in the days before internet sharing photos meant physically visiting and then together 'revisiting' the event. It was a one-time thing, at maximum you ordered some additional prints maybe. In a way, the photos were an event too. Now, photos are part of the whole. Sharing is near immediate, each and every one can do it repeatedly, at the own pace, time and place. Though, as far as I can trace, revisiting does not happen all that often.</p>

<p>Arguably, this reduced the value of 'photos'; they're more commodity than ever. They're just part of the data we consume. Images and text are, I think, less and less different. Whether this is particular to FB or the fact that people are less exposed to "only image" / "only text", I cannot tell. But social networks do fit in to this trend.<br>

People seem more open to share. The privacy concerns around facebook are interesting for the fact that so many people do not seem to care. Before internet, sharing photos was done at places we knew, so there was always a privacy-layer built-in. This somewhat more careless sharing seems to fit into the global village thinking, where connecting beyond borders is valued, and the value of the security of a well-known home seems less valued. Again, social networks fit in a trend, at best they highlight what was already happening.</p>

<p>So, what do I see going on with these pictures on social networks? Frankly, the sign of the times, a not-so-new way to do something we also did before.</p>

<p>Luis, just thinking, maybe I miss something completely in your question, and my response is actually unrelated to your question. What is it that you see happening with images in relation to social networks?</p>

<p>I also want to read Louis's thoughts related to social networks and "images." I'd also like to understand how or if he thinks still images will continue to be prevalent, given that so much audio and video now comprises it. </p>

<p>I'm not all that sure of what is happening regarding photography and social networks, which is why I posed the question.</p>

<p>Since two people have asked, here's what I'm seeing: Photography plays an accessory, not primary role in social networks, not the same as what many would consider traditional or conventional (see Walt's initial post). It's not at the core of social networks, but in a supporting role, and seems deliberately temporary, its obsolescence planned and part of the style. At the eye of that hurricane is social networking, things like story-telling, often-tenuous bonding, creating and dissolving casts of characters, developing potentials of all kinds, and being palpably, in a digital way, there. These social interactions and links happen and are constantly morphing, strengthening, coming undone, and happening again, something similar to the physics of tiny particles.</p>

<p>I see this evanescence at the root of not just photography in FB et al, but also well outside that, in the current art world. Photography is not the star of this show, not even its star vehicle, only a slow-moving expendable handmaiden in a much faster-moving world. In its own recesses, these concerns are manifesting themselves both in the work, and as Storr alluded to, in those who make it . And this also goes for video, though it has its own distinct temporal flow, it is also a dimple in time within social networks.</p>

<p>There's a lot more blinking on and off in the back of my head on this topic, but this is my answer to the question at the moment. I am very interested in what others think about my original post, and hope they will come up with many things I've not considered.</p>

<p>Mr. No O,*</p>

<p>Irving Goffman's books on the presentation of self in public seem relevant. A few brief quotes:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"... To stay in one's room away from the place where the party is given, or away from where the practitioner attends his client, is to stay away from where reality is being performed. The world, in truth, is a wedding."</p>

<p>"A status, a position, a social place is not a material thing, to be possessed and then displayed; it is a pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well articulated. Performed with ease or clumsiness, awareness or not, guile or good faith, it is none the less something that must be enacted and portrayed, something that must be realized."</p>

<p>"The whole machinery of self-production is cumbersome, of course, and sometimes breaks down, exposing its separate components: back region control; team collusion; audience tact; and so forth. But, well oiled, impressions will flow from it fast enough to put us in the grips of one of our types of reality -- the performance will come off and the firm self accorded each performed character will appear to emanate intrinsically from its performer."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>In online social networks, I would suggest that the photos *become* the proxy for the performer. They are not props as scrapbooks or snapshots would be in real in-person social encounters; they *are* the carrier of the role. This makes them a very different animal from what they are/do elsewhere.</p>

<p>[*Mr. No O perhaps uses the line "No O; but Yes U and I" to pick up chicks? Or, on the other hand, if it's *Dr.* No O, then clearly we have a stuttering Bond bad-guy ... but if that's the case he would have had at least a parachute and probably a jet pack to deploy when pushed off tall buildings, which, (ketchup and sushi) did not seem to be the case.]</p>

<p>Luis, thanks, the main reason to ask was because I wasn't sure whether I saw your question in the right light. Like you, my thoughts on this subject (social media as a whole) are much in change all the time. Even though I use it, I'm not too sure about its value beyond being a convenient combination of an addressbook and email. And a bit of making fun between friends online. Its real value for social behaviour, contact or development, I have severe doubts.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>its obsolescence planned and part of the style</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think that's a very good point. Content on social networks isn't there meant to last, it seems. It's fleeting. The photography is like that too: it's photos of events, not meant to have lasting power.</p>

<p>Another thought that keeps creeping up for me, in this context, is what I briefly touched upon before, with regards to 'only text' versus 'only image'. With internet, most magazines and newspapers, images and text are merging more and more. Images tell part of the story, the story explains part of the images. People are reading less books, hence less exposed to text without images where you have to imagine how something looks yourself. Likewise, people are less exposed to images without text. Images where you have to imagine for yourself which story it tells.<br /> OK, this is a bit too dark scenario, but it changes how images are perceived (and writing too). Social networks fit in here, since sharing a photo is done with text typically too. Images are not just images on their own there, they are part of the story.</p>

<p>Julie, I'm not 100% sure I can follow your view. In which way becomes the image the carrier of me when I post some photos on my facebook profile?</p>

<p> I have been mulling over the topic of social networking and other www archive photos for a long time, wondering how they shape the idea of photography and its place in the arts. The traditional artist will see them as an infinite resource (data mine) for research images. A "new media" artist may see the mine as something beyond simple reference. They might find its raw plasticity enormously stimulating. The photographic idea must now contain the mine. Never mind quality or how they affect. Their sheer quantity is all that matters. A list of new media art that mines data in some way would be interesting. </p>

<p>The paradigm shifts are part of the competitive nature of free enterprise. The Bell telephone overtook the Western Union telegraph. One had to disappear, or nearly. The web threatens the printed media. The latter transformed carricatures into photographs and at one point the photograph said more to many than the words (Life, Paris Match, screen star magazines). The many of us had little control over information (simply decided by the editors) but now via social networking any voice can be heard. There is no Magnum of social network photography, anyone can exhibit his images and receive at least some comment. In the background Apple and Google battle, and perhaps, although they have different philosophies, one may someday squash the other.</p>

<p>But the clock cannot be turned back. Information increases. To those who say there is too much information (and I subscribe to that, at least in terms of spurious or very subtractable information), history shows us that the Guttenburg printing revolution illicited cries of "we have too many books as it is." Centuries later, but two or three before ours, there was something like 10,000 books in circulation and it was said that nobody could assimilate all that information.</p>

<p>Like Wikipedia, social networks vastly increase our information, but pose the same question of its relevance or accuracy. The danger is in the wealth of information, much of very dubious value (except to the social network clics), which presents a great danger for the survival of intelligent information (not just "bits" but valuable or mind expanding knowledge).</p>

<p>Grafting photographs onto all this information flood takes away I believe the importance of the photograph as an object or as a communication. People want to connect and share, but often just seek familiar comfort zones and can get that in their affiliations on FB, Twitter, Plaxo, etc. They end up talking to those they know or those who share like ideas. Cyclic dead ends. The photographs become simple handmaidens of the chatter with no greater purpose than support of the chatterer or as links to his or her audience.</p>

<p>The jungle of social networks and bloated blogs or blurbs is a challenge for the curious person or intellectual. In his search for what he considers meaningful information, he will have an even more difficult time and will be putting X's over most of what is available via social networks (An exception may be their political advantages). Those who want only to converse within their comfort zone will do that over any number of limited social network fragments. No common walls on which to hang and see photographs, like existed with Life or Paris Match. Less time to go to exhibitions and few journals or reviews to carry photographs, although some Internet sites of news and discussion will no doubt fill that void.</p>

<p>The future of photography on the social networks? The huge flood of text and photos, and the inward looking nature of much social networking, will make the possibility of seeing anything interesting less likely than when the printed media and internet sites made photographs more commonly and universally accessible and appreciated. Consequently, I think good photography (and its photographers) will have little role to play on, and even less interest in being part of, social networks. The latter will likely peak in 5 or 10 years and then fall, being replaced with some other communication and information model.</p>

<p>Then again, I may be out to lunch on those predictions. It's a challenge for me to see small text on a screen, let alone see the future.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>For example, I didn't see anywhere in the terms that they couldn't, if they wanted to, produce a coffee table book with your photos, and sell it for profit.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The Facebook terms just give them permission to show the pictures on their site. I don't really think they are interested in making and selling books of their members' photographs.</p>