it's just so much easier for us to broadcast our love now. ​ He is ambivalent about the medium of social photography, arguing that the technology is only a tool that exposes existing fractures in the community and the self. ​ As Jean Baudrillard predicted in the middle of the 20th century, the camera went from changing the way we remember to changing the way we see. ​ To my son and daughters, when you read this one day: I see you and I love you with that eye too.

But as a result, I am remembering much of my life through the algorithmic frameworks of these third-party companies. ​ Consequently, we view photographs not merely as relatively rare artifacts capturing particularly significant moments but as prosthetic extensions of ourselves and our interior lives. ​ When algorithms intervene in how and when we interact with our photographs, they secure a deeply emotional inroad to our identity-forming practices. ​ These images and the way they are algorithmically organized don’t merely remind us of the past; they help shape how we think of ourselves in the present and how we might think to document our lives and articulate ourselves in the future. ​ — making us audiences of ourselves as the algorithms piece together our “best” stories for us. ​ But “Memories” features rewire relationships in such a way that makes commercial platforms indispensable mediators. ​ memories become susceptible to being evaluated according to performance metrics. ​ we must ask what memories are left on the outskirts. What experiences are illegible to or unvalued by a commercial system? What does it mean for our subjectivities at large that we are all building our memories around same scaffolding? Over four decades ago, Susan Sontag posited that photography enables “an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.” As a multiplier of photography’s influence, algorithmically fueled “Memories” features bring us deeper into a supercharged aesthetic consumerism that shapes our personal narratives along the lines of influencer culture.

seems like teenagers are perpetually rediscovering that every identity is "manufactured" and "effortless identity" requires even more effort (and cognitive dissonance) to sustain— Rob Horning (@robhorning) April 24, 2019

details from reality that betray the carefully staged set, and ground the images in the push and pull between performance and authenticity. We see details and habits revealed to us, captured in the fraction of a second the picture was taken in. ​ What makes Lee’s photographs so compelling is that they point to the infinite other moments that aren’t captured by the camera. We see a sliver of who this woman is in a fraction of a second—and behind the photograph hides a vast sea of other moments, unknown and opaque to us.

A blog on the intersections of computer, history, and art. Plus some personal stories.

a place for pictures

With a new project called Selfie Harm, photographer John Rankin Waddell, better known as Rankin, wanted to see the role social media played on self image in young people.

pic.twitter.com/231HbRffou— ☁️ ☁️ 🔴✨ (@pifafu) February 15, 2019

excited to say i wrote a book about photography and social media! it's out with @VersoBooks in April and you can pre-order it now if you'd like: https://t.co/lD43PwRjJa pic.twitter.com/bmOt0U7R5W— nathanjurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) February 4, 2019

How to use Halide and Darkroom together to make great photos.

“I think that the opposite is true too—the writing should be able to exist alongside the image without being redundant. Writing simple summary or description of what is in the picture is not enough. To attempt and recreate what the photo is already doing is a fool’s errand because describing the contents of a picture can never compete with or replace the actual visual thing. The best we can do is try to translate what the pictures make us feel, and try and understand why they affect us in the way they do.”

A look at the winners of the 2018 iPhone Photography Awards