Digital Photography and Everyday Life ─ Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices

Digital Photography and Everyday Life: Empirical studies on material visual practices explores the role that digital photography plays within everyday life.

With contributors from ten different countries and backgrounds in a range of academic disciplines - including anthropology, media studies and visual culture - this collection takes a uniquely broad perspective on photography by situating the image-making process in wider discussions on the materiality and visuality of photographic practices and explores these through empirical case studies.

By focusing on material visual practices, the book presents a comprehensive overview of some of the main challenges digital photography is bringing to everyday life. It explores how the digitization of photography has a wide-reaching impact on the use of the medium, as well as on the kinds of images that can be produced and the ways in which camera technology is developed. The exploration goes beyond mere images to think about cameras, mediations and technologies as key elements in the development of visual digital cultures.

Digital Photography and Everyday Life will be of great interest to students and scholars of Photography, Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Media Studies, as well as those studying Communication, Cultural Anthropology, and Science and Technology Studies.

Edgar Gomez Cruz is a Vice-Chancellor Research Fellow at RMIT, Melbourne. He has published widely on a number of topics relating to digital culture, ethnography, and photography. His recent publications include the bookFrom Kodak Culture to Networked Image: An Ethnography of Digital Photography Practices (2012). Current research investigates screen cultures and creative practices, which is funded through RCUK and Vice Chancellor research grants.

Asko Lehmuskallio is Chair of the ECREA TWG Visual Culture and founding member of the Nordic Network for Digital Visuality. As researcher at Universities of Tampere and Siegen, he specialises in visual culture, mediated human action and networked cameras. Recent books include Pictorial Practices in a "Cam Era": Studying non-professional camera use (2012) and#snapshot: Cameras amongst us (co-ed, 2014).