Abstract
Images in social networks have become a force to be reckoned with when considering our communal existence. So many of our daily experiences are now mediated by images, with the help of the ever-changing technology. It seems that no moment we experience is complete without documenting it, posting it and waiting for an online friend to press like or comment about it. Technology is dictating an epistemic change in the way we view ourselves and experience our social contacts. Every experience does not start, cease to exist or truly felt unless this process of documenting-posting-commenting takes place. We are constantly aware to the presence of a digital camera (whether as a smart phone application or as a camera), while sharing our every move. In this work in progress, I wish to stem from Jean-Luc Nancy’s perception of the image and bring to the fore these changes and their impact on our social interaction.
In this day and age, our social interaction is becoming more and more dependent on our ability to share visual moments to a pre-determined community of other users. I wish to follow three test cases from recent visual experiences in order to comment on the current state of the photographic image, as it perceived through social networks.
Since the invention of digital cameras, photography has undergone vast technological transformations; whether in the way we read it, feel it, view it, use it or experience it. Social networks are decreeing an additional set of new experiences of both the viewer and the user, the creator, of photographic images. I wish to suggest that these changes are not only indicative to the way in which photography changed. They also dictate epistemic changes, in regards to the way we conceive our-selves and experience our social engagement and interaction.
This is not the first time in the history of man in which technology alters communication, nor is it the last. However, it seems that we are now able to point at some possible meanings of these changes, which re-phrase traditional concepts of sender and recipient, adapting them to the ever-changing technology. Rather than focusing on sender and recipient ability to negotiate common understanding via photographic images, this text will try to underscore how social networks offer a new possibility to comprehend both the current status of the photographic image and our shared dwelling in the world; due to their unique structures and shared practices they evoke.
My theoretical framework stems from Jean-Luc Nancy’s phenomenological conceptualization of the image. As I would like to demonstrate, Nancy offers a new ontological modality of the image. Nancy views the image as a unique being, inherently connected to our communal existence in the world, while posing the viewer in its own exteriority. For Nancy, the being that is an image carries an ethical meaning, as well as aesthetical one. The encounter the viewer holds with the image is filled with tensions and emotions, deriving from the image’s unique features and character. In order to better comprehend Nancy’s unique perspective, I would also like to turn to one of Nancy’s theoretical foundations, i.e, Heidegger’s words in Being and Time. As Heidegger is the preliminary stage one needs to follow in order to arrive to Nancy, I would also like to posit a possible end point to the scale. Thus, I would like to present Louis Kaplan’ interpretation of Nancy, as this analysis offers us a possibility to posit the photographic image in Nancy’s new modality. In the last part of the text, I would like to examine whether digital photography in social networks can offer a new conception to our being with.
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1. Tel Aviv. February 2011. Thousands of people gather in one of the city port’s vast hangers for the 11th Pecha Kucha; an event which brings together designers and artists showcasing various projects in 6 minutes and 40 seconds. A quick scan of Twitter, Facebook and Instrag.am accounts during the event shows numerous uploads of images of the speakers. The common denominator of people in the audience, versatile in age and appearance, was the act of reaching out to their personal smart phones and photographing the stage.
Rotem Rozental, 2011
Sitting in the crowd, it became obvious that these people experience’ is extended well beyond the event in which they were present. The public occurrence was completed with an additional set of experience; one which allowed them to re-phrase the event. However, they experienced it through their personal commentary on the event (choosing a moment and photographing it), which was immediately transmitted to their online community. It is also quite possible that members of the same online community were sitting next to each other, photographing and posting without being aware to each other’s presence. So, in addition to experiencing the live, public event, each of the documenters experienced an event of his or hers own. This event was the product of documented images which provided new perspectives on what happened in the here and now; transforming to a singular private event when isolated by specific images and uploaded to social networks. Thus, serving as another form of social interaction; a new point of entry for communal dialogue.
2. On August 16, 2010, Israeli media found images on Facebook that shocked the world. Eden Abergil, a 21 year old ex-soldier, posted images taken during her service. The Army – Best Time of My Life!, She wrote on photographs showing her next to bound Palestinians. In these photographs she is smiling and posing with her weapon, while standing near recently arrested individuals [1]. We cannot see their faces. We can only see the eyes of the young soldier, who posted the images while reminiscing two years in uniform. She chose the images and uploaded them for her immediate network on Facebook to see. The prisoners’ silent part in this arrangement screams out to the viewer. We do not know their names, identity, current status or whether they have ever posted an image on Facebook. Actually, we only know that we haven’t heard their comments on these photographs. They do not take part in this game. They remain bound, distance, pawns in this visual game. We are only left with Eden Abergil words, as posted on Facebook, in reply to attacks of local online media:
I can’t have Arab lovers ruin my perfect life![2]
When Abergil remains in the limits of her own personal profile on Facebbok, Arabs, Arab lovers and long forgotten prisoners cannot interrupt her perfect life. They remain outside of the frame; they are not invited in, nor are they welcome. Abergil sanctifies her past by posting images she perceives as innocent memories. When these images leave her seemingly private sphere, they portray her as someone she never considered herself to be. When her private images leave her online arena, the perspective in which she is seen as an individual is ultimately transformed. Thus, the interaction posed by social networks is also comprised of an almost cruel game of perspective of meanings. The inter-contextual meaning of the images is changed by the perspective of a specific viewer or the lack of perspective of the non-viewer, of the one that is visible but unable to participate.
3. Kodak Company is a well-established player in the world of photography. During the last weeks of 2010, it launched re-branding in order to meet the new demands of the “Online” generation[3]. They are now trying to replace the ever-familiar Kodak Moment with a new concept: So Kodak – a campaign for a camera with a share button. In the campaign they suggest: You know you’re so Kodak. Why not share with your world?[4] Meaning, technology does not only make us re-define our social engagement, it may also indicate that our epistemic perception is on the verge of transforming itself to a Shared one. In this case, the participating-subject is defined as part of the social game by its willingness and ability to share her life, visually, with the community which surrounds her in the online sphere. Her ability to be part of the community is determined by her role as a sharing participant; visualizing moments of everyday life and uploading them in a click of a button. The emphasis placed in this instance is not that perception is reality. Rather, it is our shared visual activity which classifies and categorizes our communal status. In order to posit oneself in the communal game, in order to take part in the intricate web of being, one needs to take specific actions, mediated by specific technologies. Here, interaction is based on offering something to community – a snapshot delivered through a camera that is well adjusted for this task. So, this community is enclosed by its demand to share visual images to specific viewers[5] and also by the technological vehicle which enables the mere existence of this community.
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Taken with Instagr.am, Tel Aviv - Rotem Rozental, 2011
As indicated previously, my proposed point of entry to these transformations is Jean-Luc Nancy analysis of the image. Nancy offers us to view the image as an inseparable part of our daily lives. He tries to comprehend and conceptualize the image in a non-traditional perspective, i.e., as one that validates its own being. Nancy tries to view the image as distinct, as a being that has to be differentiated. This approach is opposed to Western Platonic traditional thought, which views the image as an inferior ontological entity, viewed only in relation to another distinct being with a valid ontological status. Nancy endeavors to grasp the image as a location that opens up the question about being. Hence, the meaning of the image’s ontology is not just a location in the constellation of being and existence. It also touches on the way we evoke the image where the ontological question opens.
In this context, we can also refer to Heidegger’s words about the Being in Being and Time[6]. I wish to reference Heidegger’s seminal text as one of Nancy’s theoretical foundations. We can read the way in which Heidegger relates to the Being in Being and Time (1927) as a prelude to the way in which Nancy relates to the image. Furthermore, the course Heidegger takes may clarify the intellectual atmosphere (as well as some branches of the discourse) that takes an active part in the critical arena when Nancy writes, decades later.
Heidegger opens Being and Time with a contemplation of the question of human existence (Dasein) as the question of being. For him, we must think of existence in a way that does not reduce itself to thinking about objects or things. The existential, claims Heidegger, took the place of Being. The Being is a universal concept and herein rests the problem of its definition. We cannot think of it as existence and it does not derive from definitions. Whenever a claim is made in regards to entities or the self, there is some use of the being. The sentence This is Mary presents an a-priori enigma, according to Heidegger[7]. Heidegger differentiates between two types of language in the context of thinking of things. Western philosophy analyzes objects through categories; thus developing a language that preserves the object’s priority and its central place in the discourse. According to Heidegger, we cannot think about the Dasein through the categorical structure. We must think of the Dasein through other structures of meaning; in structures that are unique for the Dasein as an entity which the being is a primal part thereof. The being of the Dasein finds its meaning in temporality. Temporality is also the historical condition of the temporal being that is contained within the Dasein itself[8]. Heidegger offers structures as being-in-the-world, being-with, etc’. This is a language that differentiates the Dasein as a unique being.
Nancy also discusses the means of existence; not of the being in itself, but of the image. Nancy claims that language usually stumbles upon conventional options – discussing the image as a type of thing or through subjective experience. According to Nancy, the image rests in between. Nancy characterizes aspects of meaning. He tries to teach us to think of the image as a verb and not as an object. Much like the Heideggerian Dasein, situated in the world in relation to people and in relation to itself, Nancy claims that the image works in relation to the viewer whilst having materiality and existing in relation to itself. Nancy asks us to think of the image as Distinct; a separated, differentiated being [9]. The image is withdrawn and differentiated by a trait; it is marked as a withdrawal. One cannot touch it, as the separation line created around the being that is an image detaches it from the functional order of things; from the mere possibility of touching it. The lack of possibility to touch it is given in the trait that separates the image and the things [10]. Nancy calls us to think about the being image as itself. He does not try to imply that the image is a thing. Rather, Nancy asks us to think of the image by its own concepts, its own language. So, we can say that not only is the image’s being unique, but that we must think of it in a language that fits the image since the language of representations and objects that is connected to the Platonic tradition does not meet that demand.
In his various writings, Nancy examines the relations between ethics and aesthetics. Nancy’s attempt to formulate an ontological status for the image brings us back to the metaphysics of the visual. Nancy views the sense of vision. The latter, being a primal sense of the subject, is central to its being, but when the subject transforms it to a part of the image, vision also takes hold of the subject’s space. Vision allows the subject to create a re-encounter with the world and thus to establish its own self. When Sartre says:
[…] one chooses in view of others, and in view of others one chooses himself [11][…]
He points out to the power of sight, as an indivisible part of the self and its role as the sphere of our common existence. I wish to suggest that for the viewer, the being that is an image creates a double connection. The image exposes the viewer to himself through the unique structures of meaning that comprise the image and by this revelation, the image allows the viewer to re-examine her surroundings.
In American Exposures, Louis Kaplan writes:
[…] Photographic images have externalized and realized how we imagine community, so it does not exist in the mind’s eye alone [12].
In his book, Kaplan analyzes photographic endeavors from the 20th century in view of Nancy’s conceptualization of the image and community. Photography, according to Kaplan’s reasoning of Nancy, is perceived as what poses questions about our being-in-common. Kaplan points at bodies of photographic works which are instances of Community exposed photography [13]. Kaplan cites Nancy’s words from Being Singular Plural:
The Being is being-with, absolutely, this is what we must think. The with is the most basic feature of the Being, the mark (trait) of the singular plurality of the origin or origins in it [14].
Photography is opened in Kaplan as a point of emergence of imagined communities. For Nancy, exposure is the focus of his thinking about community. For Kaplan, photography not only exposes our being-in-common, it is also an
[…] act of sharing, in which we are exposed to one another and in which we mark the insufficiency of the individual subject and an interiorized and self-contained entity [15].
According to Kaplan, when we photograph an individual or a group, we are posing them in exteriority; exposing them not only to the others’ gaze, but also to themselves.
I wish to posit Kaplan’s approach, based on Nancy’s perception of community, whilst thinking about photography’s role in interaction via social networks. As seen in the test cases mentioned above, photography is re-defining our social engagement in social networks. I wish to suggest that this is a transformation happening in exteriority whilst affecting the status of the subject in the world; through photography’s ability to re-formulate our being-with. Furthermore, photography in social networks changes our being-in-common, and allows us to re-examine our being-the-world. When individuals in an event share their views and perspective with their imagined community, thus creating an additional spectrum of experience, they also participate in their community. Through photography, they validate their being-with, their connection with community, which allows them to re-establish their status in the world. This process occurs by sharing, but also by vision. It is interplay of gazes, between the individual who uploads images and those who authenticate its existence by viewing the images. The sense of vision has a vital role in validating the subject’s position in the world.
In this frame of mind, how are we to relate to an image which opens a possibility for being-with whilst it becomes a part of an interface which has a set of pre-determined practices? In the online field, the image opens a possibility for the viewer to re-recognize and re-define herself through the images she shares with her immediate community. These images, however, are subjected to interface’s constraints. Their mere appearance indicates that they take part in a game with definite rules. These rules do not only point at those who can also participate in this course of action (those who can share, comment and like) but also to those who cannot take part; as we saw in the case of Eden Abergil.
Which self is exposed through these images? Which structures of meaning comprise the image? The self is seemingly exposed in its own exteriority; exteriority that is defined by a concrete interface. So, is it an exteriority or is it a space of communal interaction which is defined by singular acts that cannot overcome the limitations of the software? I wish to suggest that we should view this self in a different perspective - as a self that is made concrete by its ability to share; to stream constant visual data to those who surround him or her, in order to validate hers existence. In this experience, the self is both a spectator and an active player, viewed by others. This is an on-going visual game, allowing spectators and uploaders to provide each other with constant re-definition and re-validation of their existence through images.
Taken with Lomo app, shared via Facebook, Twitter and Instagr.am, New York, Rotem Rozental, 2011
These acts, taken in social networks, re-define in turn the act of photography, as indicated in the Kodak case. The online activity led to the development of a new type of cameras, as well as to accelerated developments of mobile phones cameras. Social networks had affected the materiality of images. As a result of the digitization of photography, the means of production of images had also changed. Here, we may also think of printing images. Meaning, even before we began to view images in fixed interfaces, the invention of digital cameras dictated an immanent change in our experience of the photographic process. This does not mean digital images are immaterial, as digital data in itself is – of course – a material. However, we must take under consideration the transformation photographed images have undergone due to technological developments. As digital images, photographs behave differently. Their existence as beings, should we follow Nancy, is different than the way they were experienced in the analog age. Analog images could not have been tagged, for instance, or uploaded within seconds for the world to see. They were not comprised solely from data or virtual pixels and their color scale was not determined by our computer screens. Printed analog images were read differently and felt differently by the viewer than the ones we save on our drives or in our infinite digital memory. Numerous debates and discussions in the professional photography scene speculate what the future will bring to printing images; an act considered almost redundant in our everyday lives. I am referring here to this aspect following Kaplan’s reference to exposure. Nowadays, the way in which photography exposes has almost nothing to do with film or dark rooms. Digital photography and social networks created a different type of photographic exposure; one that focuses on the immediacy of sharing and the creation of imagined community. Its materiality is based not on concrete objects, but on pixels and data. In this sense, we may suggest that digital photography is a ghost of traditional photography; hovering above (and inside) our interaction and re-defining our social engagement, our being-with, our identity as reflected through sharing.
In conclusion, the photographic image in the digital age posits new set of rules for epistemic perception and interaction. Technology challenged traditional forms of creating communities. Interfaces, digital cameras, smart phones applications – these are all technological means that offered us new visual ways to experience our being-with. When thinking of Nancy’s reflections of the image, we are reminded that the image is distinct and differentiated; it lies in between while demanding a place and a language of its own. In the online arena, photographic images expose our existence as communal. They reinforce our being-in-common. Furthermore, photographic images are what allow our being-in-the-world. It is a world of data that is recollected indefinitely in global servers. It is a world existing as hyper-experience. The online sphere creates a world of seemingly sporadic images, taken in events and intersections in our daily lives, which when combined together create a world, a community of their own; a world of visual engagement, positioned in infinite exteriority, exposed by sharing.
Bibliography
Eden Abergil: I can’t have Arab lovers ruin my perfect life, August 19, 2010 http://room404.net/?p=33468
I was Photographed with a Prisoner: Eden Abergil is Not alone, Ynet, August 17, 2010 http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3938196,00.html
Heidegger, M., Being and Time, trans: Macquarrie J., Robinson, E., Wiley-Blackwell, 2000
Nancy, J., L., The image – The Distinct trans.: Fort, J., in: The Ground of The Image, Fordham University Press, 2005
Kaplan, L., American Exposures – Photography and Community in the Twentieth Century, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London, 2005
The Kodak campaign site: http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2300921&pq-locale=en_US
Sartre, J. P., Existentialism Is a Humanism, trans.: Mairet P., in: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989
[1] I was Photographed with a Prisoner: Eden Abergil is Not alone, Ynet, August 17, 2010 http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3938196,00.html
[2] Eden Abergil: I can’t have Arab lovers ruin my perfect life, August 19, 2010 http://room404.net/?p=33468
[3] Online and life – a combination of these two spheres through social networks
[4] The Kodak campaign site: http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2300921&pq-locale=en_US
[5] Those who choose to take part in the community, also offering visual moments of their own to validate themselves as participants.
[6] Heidegger, M., Being and Time, trans: Macquarrie J., Robinson, E., Wiley-Blackwell, 2000
[7] Ibid, pp. 21-23
[8] Ibid, p. 41
[9] Nancy, J., L., The image – The Distinct trans.: Fort, J., in: The Ground of The Image, Fordham University Press, 2005
[10] Ibid, p. 2
[11] Sartre, J. P., Existentialism Is a Humanism, trans.: Mairet P., in: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989
[12] Kaplan, L., American Exposures – Photography and Community in the Twentieth Century, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London, 2005
[13] Ibid, p. xv
[14] Ibid, p. xvii
[15] Ibid, p. xxi