Content Of Photographs Research Articles

Photography, care and the visual economy of Gambian transatlantic kinship relations

This article examines transnational kinship relations between Gambian parents in the UK and their children and carers in The Gambia, with a focus on the production, exchange and reception of photographs. Many Gambian migrant parents in the UK take their children to The Gambia to be cared for by extended family members. Mirroring the mobility of Gambian migrants and their children as they travel between the UK and The Gambia, photographs document changing family structures and relations. It is argued that domestic photography provides an insight into the representational politics, values and aesthetics of Gambian transatlantic kinship relations. Further, the concept of the moral economy supports a hermeneutics of Gambian family photographic practice and develops our understanding of the visual economy of transnational kinship relations in a number of ways: it draws attention to the way in which the value attributed to a photograph is rooted in shared moral and cultural codes of care within transnational relations of inequality and power; it helps us to interpret Gambians’ responses to and treatment of family photographs; and it highlights the importance attributed to portrait photography and the staging, setting and aesthetics of photographic content within a Gambian imaginary.

Monument Valley, Instagram, and the Closed Circle of Representation

Monument Valley, Instagram, and the Closed Circle of Representation

Embroidered portraiture and the intentional creation of human visibility and value

Abstract The aim of my research was to create a portrait following a sequential practice-based process. A mug-shot photograph of a female face was analysed and reinterpreted as an embroidered portrait. Hand-stitched embroidery and embellishment techniques define the facial features and surroundings of the subject matter. The final representation encapsulates my total experience while researching this woman’s image in both a practical and a theoretical way. This encompasses the physical procedures of sketching, painting and embroidering her likeness, with a preoccupation and self-awareness necessary to understand the theories engaged with during these processes. I used an arts-based framework, looking at Michael Podro’s writing ‘Depiction and the concept of subjectification’ in interpreting the portrait subject. In my analysis of the mug shot I drew on Roland Barthes’ theories of ‘essence’ or ‘air’ of a person and his concept of ‘punctum’, the personal and unexplained emotional response caused by a photographic image. Similarly, Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of ‘affection-image’, the ability for a photograph, specifically the extreme close-up of the face or ‘traits of faceiticity’, to move, touch, disturb, disgust... to profoundly affect the viewer with the ‘micro-expressions’ and fine detail magnified in her frozen look. I also referred to Claire Valier’s writings on the ‘punitive power’ of the documentary photograph to punish, shame, shock, elicit guilt or incarcerate as a means of social commentary and an agent of justice (Valier 2004: 254). These philosophies informed the potency and persuasiveness of the photographic content. The picture acts as a visual record of an actual moment that facilitates belief in the accuracy of the event depicted. With this, my female subject represented in the mug shot was a criminal, a prostitute and there was incriminating physical evidence of drug addiction. By transforming the mug shot to a handcrafted embroidered portrait, I intended to remove the stigmatized version of the women. While doing so, I willingly addressed the issues of agency in the subject, viewer and image–maker relationship. These concepts brought forth an intense analysis of my motives and intentions in making the portrait, which eventually lead to an understanding and development of a process that revealed my own translation of my subject’s humanity.

A FUNÇÃO LÓGICA DESEMPENHADA PELAS FOTOGRAFIAS NOS PENSAMENTOS ACERCA DOS OBJETOS FOTOGRAFADOS

O objetivo deste artigo é compreender a função lógica desempenhada pelas fotografias nos pensamentos acerca de entidades conhecidas exclusivamente através de fotografias. Buscarei contrastar duas linhas interpretativas gerais: a fotografia como conhecimento por familiaridade e como conhecimento por descrição. A análise dessas linhas interpretativas levará em consideração o paralelo com as discussões sobre memórias episódicas e metafísica do tempo. Ao longo do artigo, buscarei criticar o tratamento da fotografia como familiaridade, tendo como base as ideias de John Zeimbekis. No tratamento como familiaridade, a fotografia teria uma função lógica semelhante a um demonstrativo, que apontaria para entidades particulares no passado, através da rota causal que une a fotografia ao referente. A crítica de Zeimbekis tem como ponto de partida a distinção entre o referente causal da fotografia e o seu conteúdo representacional (as propriedades visuais nela exemplificadas). A tese a ser sustentada é que o conteúdo da fotografia não seria suficiente para a determinação da identidade numérica do referente. Com isso, propõe-se o deslocamento da função lógica da fotografia da função referencial para a predicativa. A fotografia exemplificaria propriedades fenomenais atribuídas a uma entidade conhecida apenas por descrição através da fotografia.

Click to Share: Patterns in Tourist Photography and Sharing

AbstractDifferences between tourists in photographing and photo‐sharing behaviours have been under‐researched. We examined the influence of geographic origin and travel group composition on tourist photographing and sharing. Questionnaires were used to measure photographing and sharing frequency, while participant observation afforded a deeper examination of sharing processes. Findings showed differences in photography behaviour between solo and accompanied tourists. Tourists from some continents also took and shared photographs more frequently. Observations uncovered processes connecting sharing, photographing, and content of photographs. As user‐generated content becomes increasingly influential in tourism management, attention to origin, group composition and other individual differences can help engage tourists in photographing and sharing. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Enhancing visual literacy through interpretation of photo-genres: toward a genre typology of journalistic photographs

ABSTRACTAlthough genre is one of the most extensively employed concepts in various disciplines, only a few attempts have been made to classify images in the press, providing either a palette of thematic categories similar to those of photography competitions or theory-based classifications, which often ignore certain types of photographs. In addition, no studies have suggested the genre typology as a tool for the interpretation of journalistic photographs. Based on a literature review and visual material analysis from the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, this study compiles a typology that sets out four photo-genres: news photography, reportage photography, portrait photography and illustrative photography, with related photo-types. The criteria used to distinguish certain photo-types are based on differences in the visual content of photographs, their context, layout of display, number of images, and their fulfillment of informative, expressive, impressive, esthetic, illustrative or marketing functions. As a result, the study describes each genre and type separately, illustrated by visual samples. The conclusion is that although genres have a tendency to merge and create hybrids, and thus, any attempt at classifying them leads to certain generalizations, the typology can be applied as a tool in visual literacy education to facilitate students’ interpretation of journalistic photographs.

A Comparative Analysis of Media Consumption in Delhi, India

A common assumption is that age is the chief determinant for media habits of people. However, new researches believe that habits are the function of mindset rather than age. We are living in an era of cage-free content, where all media whether text, audio or video based are distributed and consumed across a wide range of channels from which individuals can pick and choose. Social media has today made far-reaching changes to the way many of us consume media. It encourages people to create content. Anyone can write articles or blogs, create photographic content, video content, broadcast ones voice through the media, and so on. Social media has weaned off traditional media. For example, digital technologies are causing vast changes in the way we use media. Understanding the role of media in young peoples lives is therefore of immense importance for those concerned about promoting the healthy development of children and teenagers, including parents, paediatricians, policymakers, childrens advocates, educators, and public health groups. The survey for the same was done among teenagers (13-18 year olds) and young adults (19-25 year olds) and the results have been graphically represented here.

Tratamiento fotográfico en webs periodísticas de la Universidad de Porto. Análisis descriptivo basado en indicadores de calidad

This work gives an account of his investigation in 2014 that deals with the description and characterization of the general treatment of the photograph in three newspaper portals sponsored by the Universidade do Porto with high standards of quality (P3, JPN and Ciencia 2.0). On the methodological choice of content analysis, using as a tool for data collection a book of multidimensional codes own comes to the conclusion that there are strengths and gaps between the three common means object of study, which do not differ in excess of those detected by other studies to professional media digital press.The main strengths with a high degree of use of photographic content, layout and correct consistency interactivity. Next to the abuse of very small photographs, the main problem identified is that the pictures have very little information value, limited in most cases to a decorative function.

Placing the enslaved at Oak Alley Plantation: narratives, spatial contexts, and the limits of surrogation

ABSTRACTAs iconic landscapes of the American South and significant heritage tourism destinations, Southern plantation museums have traditionally erased slavery and the enslaved from their narratives of the antebellum past. Recently, some plantation museums, such as Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana, are commemorating the enslaved within their landscapes and narratives, although often in limited and insufficient ways. In this paper, I draw on theories of symbolic excavation and commemorative surrogation to understand both the difficult memory work necessary to include the history of slavery at plantation museums and the fact that such museums or memorials act as surrogates for the lives of enslaved women and men that have been lost from our social memory. Using photographic documentation, content analysis, and textual analysis, I then examine the Slavery at Oak Alley exhibit to argue that fully assessing the efficacy of such commemorative surrogates requires that they be placed within the spatial narratives of both the plantation museum and the history of slavery more broadly.

Evidence of an emerging levee failure mechanism causing disastrous floods in Italy

AbstractA levee failure occurred along the Secchia River, Northern Italy, on 19 January 2014, resulting in flood damage in excess of $500 million. In response to this failure, immediate surveillance of other levees in the region led to the identification of a second breach developing on the neighboring Panaro River, where rapid mitigation efforts were successful in averting a full levee failure. The paired breach events that occurred along the Secchia and Panaro Rivers provided an excellent window on an emerging levee failure mechanism. In the Secchia River, by combining the information content of photographs taken from helicopters in the early stage of breach development and 10 cm resolution aerial photographs taken in 2010 and 2012, animal burrows were found to exist in the precise levee location where the breach originated. In the Panaro River, internal erosion was observed to occur at a location where a crested porcupine den was known to exist and this erosion led to the collapse of the levee top. This paper uses detailed numerical modeling of rainfall, river flow, and variably saturated flow in the levee to explore the hydraulic and geotechnical mechanisms that were triggered along the Secchia and Panaro Rivers by activities of burrowing animals leading to levee failures. As habitats become more fragmented and constrained along river corridors, it is possible that this failure mechanism could become more prevalent and, therefore, will demand greater attention in both the design and maintenance of earthen hydraulic structures as well as in wildlife management.

Accounting for Time in Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Diaries and Photographs

Diaries and photos are technologies that solicit and generate content, and they are places to archive and to keep. The content elicited by a diary is enmeshed with a physical format that emphasises daily or hourly rhythms of life; the content and format co-exist in tension with fleeting temporality and certain mortality. Likewise, the photograph records an impression of a single moment in order to preserve that moment for an unknowable future. This paper shows how the content of diaries and photographs is shaped by a moral obligation to account for time and a temporal orientation to the future. Nineteenth century diaries and photographs are deterministic technologies orienting their users’ actions within the historical context of the industrial revolution. They both promise reparation in anticipation of future losses (adjudged on a numberless balance sheet of life) and demand an active account of personal productivity; in these discursive operations, the diary and photograph may aggravate rather than answer anxieties about time.

Pictures into words

Subject access to images is a major issue for image collections. How well does current professional indexing represent the different levels of meaning in a photograph? How do indexers go about indexing an image? The first part of this article presents the results of a study investigating how current indexing represents the subject content of historic photographs. The second part reports on how professional indexers’ representation of subject content differs from the interpretations of taggers, and suggests a practical way that indexers can work with taggers to deal with the classic problem of resource constraints to enhance subject metadata and make photo collections more accessible.

Effect of tourist photographs on attitudes towards destination: Manifest and latent content

In the sender-message-receiver communication model, tourist photographs project organic destination images which are interpreted on the receiving end of the communication channel by potential tourists, influencing their tourism-related attitudes and affecting behavior. This study investigated how photographs taken by American and Korean tourists while visiting Russia and posted in travel blogs and on media-sharing websites affect perceptions of Russia as a travel destination by those who view these images. The study specifically focused on latent content of tourist photographs with respect to such destination attributes as crowdedness, cleanliness, level of economic development, personal safety, level of modernity, friendliness, uniqueness, and extent of commercialization, as well as affective qualities of destination places. Researchers evaluated the interplay between the manifest and latent content of the images and how each type of content separately and both types together affected attitudes of viewers towards the destination and their desire to visit it.

A rapid indicator of cultural ecosystem service usage at a fine spatial scale: Content analysis of social media photographs

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are an important benefit that habitats provide, particularly in the fragments of natural ecosystems that remain in urban areas. To manage CES we need to understand what people use habitats for, and where different activities take place. It is challenging to assess CES provision, as surveys and interviews are time consuming and can be expensive. Social media data, particularly geo-tagged photographs, are spatially explicit and contain visual information that can be used to infer cultural use. Indicators of CES derived from social media make use of existing data so may contribute useful information for rapid, cost-effective assessments of CES. In this study we develop an indicator of CES usage that is derived from photographs from an image-sharing website, at two different scales. First, we compare four small (<150ha) urban mangrove sites in Singapore, using photograph content to classify sites according to predominant cultural use. Second, the spatial distribution of different CES was modelled within one site using MaxEnt. A resampling simulation was conducted to identify the sensitivity of the photograph classification to the number of photographs classified. Photographs of social recreation, organisms and landscapes occurred most commonly. The proportional occurrence of photograph types differed between sites depending on their characteristics. Within one site, the probability of occurrence of social recreation photographs was highest around built focal points, while photographs of organisms were more likely in the mangrove and terrestrial habitats. Classifying more than 50–70 photographs (which would take approximately 30minutes) gave only small increases in categorisation accuracy. This tool for CES assessment rapidly provided information that would be useful for managing Singapore's mangroves. The approach could be widely applied to assess CES provision across a range of habitats and settings, helping CES to become more commonly considered in ecosystem service evaluations.

An operative quantitative analysis of multispectral images of the eyeground

In the approximation of a four-layer model of the eyeground, we have studied the information content of photographs of the eyeground obtained in different spectral intervals from the visible range of the spectrum. We have shown that, under conditions of a priori uncertainty of all parameters of the eyeground that affect spectral fluxes of light multiply scattered by the eyeground, the two-dimensional distributions of the following parameters can be determined: (i) the contents of hemoglobin and macular pigment in the retina; (ii) the contents of melanin in the pigment epithelium and choroid; (iii) the degree of blood oxygenation; and (iv) the structural parameter of the retina, which characterizes the volume concentration of its effective scatterers. Based on results of a numerical simulation of the light-transfer process in the medium under study, we have determined regression relationships between parameters of the eyeground and spectral characteristics of its image and have proposed a method for the operative retrieval of parameter maps of the eyeground, which uses the determined regressions.

We are what we do: Examining learner‐generated content in the anatomy laboratory through the lens of activity theory

Video and photography are often used for delivering content within the anatomical sciences. However, instructors typically produce these resources to provide instructional or procedural information. Although the benefits of learner-generated content have been explored within educational research, virtually no studies have investigated the use of learner-generated video and photograph content within anatomy dissection laboratories. This study outlines an activity involving learner-generated video diaries and learner-generated photograph assignments produced during anatomy laboratory sessions. The learner-generated photographs and videos provided instructors with a means of formative assessment and allowed instructors to identify evidence of collaborative behavior in the laboratory. Student questionnaires (n = 21) and interviews (n = 5), as well as in-class observations, were conducted to examine student perspectives on the laboratory activities. The quantitative and qualitative data were examined using the framework of activity theory to identify contradictions between student expectations of, and engagement with, the activity and the actual experiences of the students. Results indicate that learner-generated photograph and video content can act as a rich source of data on student learning processes and can be used for formative assessment, for observing collaborative behavior, and as a starting point for class discussions. This study stresses the idea that technology choice for activities must align with instructional goals. This research also highlights the utility of activity theory as a framework for assessing classroom and laboratory activities, demonstrating that this approach can guide the development of laboratory activities.

Aesthetic Image Enhancement by Dependence-Aware Object Recomposition

This paper proposes an image-enhancement method to optimize photograph composition by rearranging foreground objects in the photograph. To adjust objects' positions while keeping the original scene content, we first perform a novel structure dependence analysis on the image to obtain the dependencies between all background regions. To determine the optimal positions for foreground objects, we formulate an optimization problem based on widely used heuristics for aesthetically pleasing pictures. Semantic relations between foreground objects are also taken into account during optimization. The final output is produced by moving foreground objects, together with their dependent regions, to optimal positions. The results show that our approach can effectively optimize photographs with single or multiple foreground objects without compromising the original photograph content.

Online coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games on the ABC, BBC, CBC and TVNZ

The same pervasive strategies that relegate women’s sports coverage to secondary status in the traditional sports media are apparent in online coverage. Content analysis of the extent and nature of 2008 Olympic Games coverage by four national public broadcasters shows men and their sports were the story in Beijing. The gender gap in story numbers favoured male athletes by a margin of four to one. Men’s achievements were given more prominence than women’s with twice as many lead stories and photographs of male athletes taking top spot on the websites’ splash pages. The content of photographs and the language of online stories also perpetuated gender stereotypes and sexual difference by framing sportswomen as emotionally weak or dependent and less committed than male athletes.

The first ‘Clean’ war? Visually framing civilian casualties in the British Press during the 2003 Iraq invasion

This article examines the visual coverage of civilian casualty incidents in the first month of the Iraq invasion in 2003, drawing on a detailed and comprehensive content and framing analysis of Iraq war photographs printed in seven British national newspapers. The study found that around 7 per cent of all Iraq-related news photographs dealt with the issue of civilian casualties (including journalists and non-Iraqis), across tabloid and ‘quality’ press titles. However, the prominence, treatment and functions of civilian casualty photographs varied greatly among particular newspapers, and not always in a predictable manner considering the papers’ editorial positions on the conflict. The article details the study’s findings on the varying occurrence of casualty-related photographs, and analyses the ways in which such events were pictorially and verbally framed; whether by graphically representing the human cost of the war or, alternatively, by ‘disappearing the dead’ through visual and rhetorical means.

Shot in the Dark: Notes on Photography, Causality, and Content

Pictures—paintings, etchings, photographs, CGI—let us see what is not there. Or, rather, since what pictures depict is not really there, we do not really see the pictorial contents. But we seem to see the depicted things: we “see” them “in” the pictures. One kind of picture—photographs— would seem to have a special capacity to yield this experience of “seeming-to-see.” Over the last couple of decades, the question of what it is to see something in a picture—photographic or otherwise—has been lively discussed. The papers in this thesis are all attempts at contributing to this discussion.Essay I treats the special subjective experience one undergoes in looking at photographs (as opposed to “handmade” images). I argue that this experience is (in part) due to our taking photographs as a certain kind of trace. Along the way, it is also argued that Kendall Walton’s “transparency thesis”—the thought that one literally, actually, sees photographed objects when one sees photographs of them—cannot explain the phenomenology of photography. Behind Walton’s transparency thesis lies a view of photography as an essentially causal medium; it is the merely causal process of photography that, on Walton’s view, makes photographs transparent. In Essay II, I offer an account of the role of causality in photography, and discuss its implications for the possible contents of photographs. Essays III and IV discuss pictorial perception in general. Essay III treats Richard Wollheim’s notion of non-localisation, and (what I call) pictorial perceptual presence, how things, which are strictly speaking not seen in an image, are still part of our apprehension of the picture. Essay IV gives an account of the seeing of states of affairs in pictures, and points to the significance of such seeing.