How digital photography remade our world
The selfie, the faux-vintage photo, the self-destructing image, the food photo—these new visual forms and the devices and platforms that facilitate them have fomented a cultural revolution. Not only has the art of photography and the industry around it been transformed, but the way we under-stand ourselves has changed. The Social Photo provides a language and conceptual framework to comprehend photography in the age of social media. This updated edition includes a new preface contemplating the fate of the social photo in the era of AI-generated images.
What People Are Saying
"Social photos are not primarily about making media but about sharing eyes,' Nathan Jurgenson writes in this important and timely book. Grappling with the significance of the billions of largely ephemeral images that inhabit social media, he persuasively delineates many of the key boundaries between what was previously understood to be photography and the contemporary image environment." Fred Ritchin, author of Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen
"Timely...Jurgenson puts the social photo in a broader context of photographic history in a way that should appeal to even the sniffiest critic." Economist
"[In The Social Photo], Jurgenson suggests that in today's ocean of images, the traditional way we have looked at pictures is outdated. He suggests a new way to understand them, one that is 'less art historical and more social theoretical'." Taylor Dafoe, artnet News
"Jurgenson beautifully connects the newfound social documentary style with the history of photography and paints a picture of the similarities and differences of traditional photography and what he deems the new 'social photos.'" Lauren Capraro, Communication Booknotes Quarterly
"A lively and provocative read." Los Angeles Times
"A refreshing respite from most of the commentary streaming from our devices today." Financial Times
About the Author
Nathan Jurgenson is a social media theorist. He was cofounder of the Theorizing the Web conference and founder and editor-in-chief of Real Life magazine. He previously worked as a sociologist at Snap Inc., parent company of Snapchat, from 2013 to 2022.