WORKING NOT BEGGING NO.1014 27 JAN - 2 FEB 2014 2.

00
1.00 OF COVER PRICE GOES TO THE VENDOR PLEASE BUY FROM BADGED VENDORS ONLY

WHY DO WE PHOTOGRAPH EVERYTHING?

OR IT DIDNT HAPPEN
BITN 1014_01 (Cover).indd 1 24/01/2014 12:24

PICS

Why do we feel the need to photograph our every movement? Because we can may be one answer, as digital technology gets ever simpler. But is there something more to the seles, the band shots and the snaps of the big night out, asks Michael Bonnet

Get on i

I have a photo taken of the TV screen of the crowd at the presidential inauguration ball, says Gordon Bell, a Microsoft researcher. Everyone in the audience is taking a kind of crappy picture low resolution, low light to validate they were there and show their kids and colleagues. I could say I attended too, by going to the web and nding the same photo. Bells message if you concentrate on the recording, you may miss the real content will resonate with those whove grown increasingly exasperated by the ubiquitous use of camera phones. So it may come as a surprise to learn that the messenger is something of a photography addict himself. And thats putting it lightly. Since 1998 the 79-year-old computer scientist has been working on a life-logging experiment, digitising and storing as many of his experiences as he can in an attempt to build a fully searchable archive. MyLifeBits includes every document Bell has ever read or produced, from text messages to shop receipts, a multitude of personal health data (including a record of his heartbeats from his pacemaker) and, of course, pictures. Lots of pictures. Bell wears a clip-on time-lapse camera, which
10 THE BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH 27 JAN - 2 FEB 2014

takes automated photographs as he goes about his business. His e-memory contains over 150,000 of these images. My motivation is for memory recall and record keeping, says Bell, although the ambitions of Microsoft to nd a commercial use for the personal data we are now able to capture no doubt plays a signicant part.

Bell has been logging texts, receipts, health data and more since 1998

Bells behaviour may seem eccentric or excessive, but it is not a million miles away from what many of us are doing photographing more extensively than ever before and sharing the results with the world on the likes of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. But whats our motivation? The accessibility of digital technology has helped to make photography more popular and prevalent than at any time in history. If 2013 began for Bell puzzling over the photographs taken of Obama at his inauguration, it Anything ended with many you do in your of us perplexed the presidents non-digital life by participation becomes an in a sele at event as soon Nelson Mandelas Internet as you post it. memorial. search giant Yahoo estimates that this year a mind-boggling 880 billion photographs will be taken. Yet the increased means to take photographs cannot explain such gures alone, and the growth of online social networking, both as a motivating factor to take pictures as well as a medium on which to share them, is arguably more signicant. Figures from Facebook reveal that over 200,000 pictures are uploaded to the

BITN 1014_10,11,13,14 (photos).indd 10

24/01/2014 10:00

P H O T O

F I X A T I O N

et some focus n it
social networking site each minute, while one in every four of us now use some form of social media. In 2010 German photographer Wolfram Hahn persuaded a number of Berliners to re-stage the prole pictures they had taken for social media sites. These photographs, in Hahns words, explored a tension between the digital identity that will eventually allow the individual to be included within a broad community, while at the same time shut away at home. Hahn believes that those active on sites such as Facebook experience social pressures to take part in a photographic culture. Anything you do in your non-digital-life becomes an event as soon as you post it in a social network. In order to gain attention, you need to be constantly posting and uploading things. But how different is present day behaviour like the sele from what went before? Going back a short while before the camera phone, digital cameras created one of the dening poses of our time arms stretched out, the photographer peering through the viewnder, half trying to control the world, half trying to hold it at bay. Elizabeth Edwards, professor of photographic history at De Montfort

BITN 1014_10,11,13,14 (photos).indd 11

24/01/2014 10:00

P H O T O

F I X A T I O N

University, Leicester, looks back even further. The self-image has always addressed a deep-seated need to state and perform ones identity and even existence. One nds this in 19th century family photography, which produced a certain kind of social icon that was exchanged amongst family and friends and often inserted into albums alongside photographs of celebrities of the day. Indeed, when we view todays camera phone obsession from a historical perspective it begins to look decidedly less exceptional. In the 1920s it was photo booths that were capturing the publics image and imagination; by the 1970s Polaroid had taken over; and today, digital cameras are in the ascendency. The common theme running through all these inventions, says Bell, is a desire to achieve instant

self-gratication through photography. The difference today is that weve got better at it. No longer are we limited to 36 exposures when snapping away, or required to travel to nd a photo-booth. So long as we have a smart phone and a Facebook account we are The selfcapable of being a one-person image has photographer, always developer and addressed publisher and it doesnt cost us a a need to penny. state ones These identity. developments have transformed the role of photography from depicting the past to conveying the present. As Edwards puts it: In the past photographs were about producing social icons, preserving a likeness; they are now used to connect the individual to the experience of the moment at this gig, or this party, with this person.

David Cameron, Denmarks prime minister Helle Thorning Schmidt and Barack Obama pose for a sele at Nelson Mandelas memorial while Michelle Obama pretends not to notice. Photo: AFP/Roberto Schmidt/Getty

Michael Forrester, a University of Kent psychologist, believes this pictures or it didnt happen mentality taps into peoples concerns with documenting the good time they want to imagine they are having, which in turn fuels the chronic desire some people have with bringing out their phones. There are those who worry that by using photographs in this way we are becoming reliant on technology and impairing our ability to function without it. A recent study by academics at Faireld University in the US claims people remember fewer details about objects they have photographed, compared with objects they have not. This suggests that the traditional use of photographs as an aide memoire may be inherently awed. Bell however is unperturbed. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man who has dedicated the last 18 years to constructing his own digital archive Bell believes that the distinction between our own memories and the technology that supports them is becoming increasingly arbitrary. Instead of contrasting the effectiveness of the man with the machine, Bell thinks we should focus on the
27 JAN - 2 FEB 2014 THE BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH 13

BITN 1014_10,11,13,14 (photos).indd 13

24/01/2014 10:00

P H O T O

F I X A T I O N

combined performance of the manmachine system. So where is the cult of the digital camera leading us, and is there any sign that our obsession with it is beginning to wear off? One of the interesting consequences of the digitisation of music was that MP3 proved a catalyst for the revival of vinyl, with fans frustrated by a deterioration of sound quality and lamenting the loss of the physical object. But as yet there has been little evidence of a regressive photography movement. Never mind Box Brownies, digital SLR sales were reported to have fallen by 10-15 per cent last year. There has however been a backlash against some of the behaviour that the new technology allows, perhaps put most clearly by the band Savages, who issued the following note to fans in a bid to stop fans from succumbing to the belief that they couldnt possibly have been at the gig if they didnt have photos of it. Our goal is to discover better ways of living and experiencing music. We believe that the use of phones to lm and take pictures during a gig prevents all of us from totally immersing ourselves. Lets make this evening special. Silence your phones. Our addiction to taking and posting photos of everything we do has led to the emergence of apps like Snapchat, which is either endishly clever or downright weird, depending on your view. Were now savvy enough to know that if we leave our photos

up online, someone may take advantage of them and we leave ourselves open to missing out on that job interview or having to explain ourselves to our partners and could even leave ourselves open to serious abuse. Rather though than deciding not to post the photos that make us vulnerable in the rst place, we now have an app that allows us to full our craving for digital exhibitionism but only for a short while, before the images disappear as if well, as if theyd never been taken. Perhaps its not so surprising that the man who wears an automated camera that has taken over 150,000 pictures does not feel that our infatuation with the camera has reached its zenith. I think it is still building, says Bell. But at some point people will say whats the point? since someone else will be capturing the moment and youll be able to get the image from the web. When that time is however, remains to be seen.

BITN 1014_10,11,13,14 (photos).indd 14

24/01/2014 10:00