Redai dili (Mar 2024)
Re-Writing Place Significance Through Everyday Urban Photography: A Case Study of Guangzhou Youth
Abstract
With the popularity of digital photography equipment in daily life, photography has emerged as the primary means for people to explore places, document life experiences, and engage in social activities. Taking the Guangzhou youth group as an example, this study combined the research methods of ethnography, field observation, and questionnaire surveys to collect data and analyze the integration of digital photography, social platforms, and daily life. This study discussed how urban photography activities redefine the meaning of places by analyzing their processes, types, and characteristics in the quotidian. The results revealed the following insights: (1) The process and content of everyday urban photography activities are closely related to social platforms and can be divided into three stages: preparation, taking photos, and processing and sharing photos. These three stages are not linear but often intersect, possibly existing simultaneously, and are implemented across platforms. According to the photographic object types, everyday urban photography can be divided into portrait photography, architecture and street landscape photography, and daily life scene photography. (2) Everyday urban photography is characterized as an embodied and emotional process that integrates photographer's expectations, skills, and practices. The visual impact of this process lies in capturing moments and transforming ordinary (close) landscape from a specific time and space into distant and extraordinary scenes. These digital photos, which condense time and space, are no longer the isolated expression of film photos. Instead, with geographical positioning services, they constitute the photographer's personal narrative and movement path on social platforms, containing the photographer's imaginative sense of place, aesthetic concepts, and social relations. (3) The visualization, social attributes, and geotagging of everyday urban photography alter people's perception and experience of places, reshaping the meaning of these locations. Through the interplay of spatial media, geolocation services, and social platforms, photography activities and local experiences are progressively merging. Editable images and interactive social platforms overlay on geotagged places, allowing people to describe places and their activities in novel ways. Consequently, the original attributes of a place may be weakened, emphasizing visual attributes and media significance. Places become backgrounds in portraits, venues for of self-presentation, and geotags on social media. Therefore, places achieve the coexistence of virtual and realistic meanings. The reason for this phenomenon is the development of social media, the growing social demand for self-expression or exhibition, and the expanded accessibility of expression channels. The research results introduce the perspective of daily life into digital photography research, enriching the visual and social media research content of human geography in China.
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