[Air-L] New Book: Digital Photography and Everyday Life: Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices

[Edgar Gómez Cruz]

Our new edited collection is out:

Digital Photography and Everyday Life: Empirical Studies on Material Visual
Practices
<https://www.routledge.com/Digital-Photography-and-Everyday-Life-Empirical-Studies-on-Material-Visual/Gomez-Cruz-Lehmuskallio/p/book/9781138899810>
(Routledge Studies in European Communication Research and Education)
Edited by Edgar Gómez Cruz and Asko Lehmuskallio

With contributors from ten different countries and backgrounds in a range
of academic disciplines - including anthropology, media studies and visual
culture - this collection takes a uniquely broad perspective on photography
by situating the image-making process in wider discussions on the
materiality and visuality of photographic practices and explores these
through empirical case studies.

By focusing on material visual practices, the book presents a comprehensive
overview of some of the main challenges digital photography is bringing to
everyday life. It explores how the digitization of photography has a
wide-reaching impact on the use of the medium, as well as on the kinds of
images that can be produced and the ways in which camera technology is
developed. The exploration goes beyond mere images to think about cameras,
mediations and technologies as key elements in the development of visual
digital cultures.

Digital Photography and Everyday Life will be of great interest to students
and scholars of Photography, Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Media
Studies, as well as those studying Communication, Cultural Anthropology,
and Science and Technology Studies.

Reviews

"This is an outstanding collection of essays which invites a radical
rethinking of photography. Each chapter dismantles conventional
understandings of photography by examining in detail a specific assemblage
of social practice, camera technology and light-generated image. What
photography is, what it does and what it might do is thus rendered
radically open, and photography is once more made as remarkable, emergent
and diverse as it was a century and a half ago. Essential reading for
anyone interested in photography and visual culture."

Gillian Rose, Professor of Cultural Geography, The Open University, and
Author of Visual Methodologies

"This exciting and multifaceted book casts new light on the practice of
photography. Highlighting the various processes of communication,
networking and human-nonhuman relationality in different parts of the
world, it shows the photographic medium as literally teeming with life.
This is a must-read not just for scholars and students of photography but
for anyone who reads the news, uses social media, moves from place to place
or owns a camera phone!"

Joanna Zylinska, Professor of New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths,
University of London, and Curator of Photomediations Machine


About the Authors

Edgar Gómez Cruz is a Vice-Chancellor Research Fellow at RMIT, Melbourne.
He has published widely on a number of topics relating to digital culture,
ethnography, and photography. His recent publications include the book From
Kodak Culture to Networked Image: An Ethnography of Digital Photography
Practices (2012). Current research investigates screen cultures and
citizenship, which is funded through RCUK and Vice Chancellor research
grants.

Asko Lehmuskallio is Chair of the ECREA TWG Visual Culture and founding
member of the Nordic Network for Digital Visuality. As researcher at
Universities of Tampere and Siegen, he specialises in visual culture,
mediated human action and networked cameras. Recent books include Pictorial
Practices in a "Cam Era": Studying non-professional camera use (2012) and
#snapshot: Cameras amongst us (co-ed, 2014).