2025 SPE Annual Conference: Adaptations
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print this pagePleasing our Digital Mother
Stafford Hiroshi Smith
Saturday, October 25 - 3:50PM to 4:35PM
Clark Theater
Photography exploits our infantile need for attention. This exploitation has been growing since the early days of the medium, but has suddenly reached a crisis point with the dawning of social media. The true impact of the digital age on photography is the reversal of our relationship with the camera. It is no longer a tool that we control. It has become a device to whose authority we willingly submit. Using a Freudian/Marxist/Warholian lens I will dissect this relationship and the magnitude of its impact on our culture.
Control of photography is problematized by our relationship with the corporations that we rely on to produce and distribute images. We have been trading control for convenience since the 1880's. This slippery slope, which began with Kodak's introduction of the point-and-shoot camera, has begun a steep slide into the abyss of social media.
This talk is not meant to be a Luddite tirade against digital photography. Instead, I hope to raise awareness about how technology is being used to take advantage of deep-seated biological impulses. We are being seduced into a culture of self-surveillance while falling for an illusion that we are still in control. Like most problems that plague humans, we can begin by blaming our parents.
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