Week 7

In week 7, we discussed expanded photography with the prompt, ‘How can we use the term “expanded photography” to think about the possibilities of contemporary and photography? And how to extend our own media practice’. Expanded photography has interrelated but differing meanings from the week’s readings. Cramerotti (2011) argues the term makes sense of photography in ‘excess’ and how it exceeds it’s recognised meaning. Soutter (2016) argues that photography is not a destination in itself, but instead one method among many. I found it difficult to wrap my head around what really Expanded Photography really was, from my understanding after the readings and personal research, it is expanding the boundaries of traditional photography and giving the photography more context- literally expanding photography. Such as location, formal, and socio-cultural. The activity being creating a cinemagraph helped to further develop my understanding of expanded photography. Expanded photography breaks the grounds of what I traditionally understood as ‘photography’ by finishing the activity with a moving GIF file, something uncommon in photography.
With the rise of social media, it questioned photographers’ authenticity, “would digital technology undermine the craft of analogue photography and, more worryingly, its veracity? Would the invisible hand of Photoshop render not just the process, but the so-called “truth” of photography, obsolete?” (O’Hagan, 2018). I found this discussion very interesting, but I think digital technology and social media often add a lot of authenticity to photographs. Because anyone can take a picture at any time, I feel as though a lot of photographs now are more ‘organic’ or ‘informal’ than they used to be. Without having professional cameras, lights and backdrops, average people have a creative medium at their hands. Despite the rise in editing like Photoshop as well as Face Tune (which decreases authenticity), I think technological access and the digital rise has done a lot of good in terms of authenticity in photography.

REFERENCES
Lucy Soutter (2016), ‘Expanded Photography: Persistence of the Photographic’ PhotoResearcher 26, pp.36-43.

Alfredo Cramerotti (2011), ‘The Truth of Experience: Notes on Expanded Photography’, Digicult (66), August.

Sean O’Hagan (2018), ‘What next for photography in the age of Instagram’, The Guardian, 14 October