Collaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community

This article studies three collaborative documentary photographic projects, The Polling Place Photo Project, Mapping Main Street (United States, 2008 and 2009) and Simon Roberts’s Election Project (Great Britain, 2010), which operated with similar goals and modes—to re-engage the public and citizens...

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Autor principal:	Karine Chambefort-Kay
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR
Publicado:	Association Française d'Etudes Américaines 2015
Materias:	Documentary photography collaborative documentary online photographic archive Simon Roberts Mapping Main Street Election Project History America E-F America E11-143
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/f56c222554074faf933fc0ab00c6f00b
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:f56c222554074faf933fc0ab00c6f00b
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:f56c222554074faf933fc0ab00c6f00b2021-12-02T10:15:20ZCollaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community1765-276610.4000/transatlantica.7171https://doaj.org/article/f56c222554074faf933fc0ab00c6f00b2015-03-01T00:00:00Zhttp://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7171https://doaj.org/toc/1765-2766This article studies three collaborative documentary photographic projects, The Polling Place Photo Project, Mapping Main Street (United States, 2008 and 2009) and Simon Roberts’s Election Project (Great Britain, 2010), which operated with similar goals and modes—to re-engage the public and citizens by committing them to building an online archive of images. The features of the collaborative documentary mode are analysed as a number of strategies involving the authority of amateurs, forms of crowdsourcing and a new kind of agency as photographs are produced by multiple contributors and displayed online. As these strategies seem to be photographic emulations of the democratic process, the question arises of the apparent correspondence between such strategies and the explicit purpose of enhancing citizenship and democracy or fostering involvement and community. Is the medium the message in collaborative documentary? This study shows the limits of a technology-oriented approach to the collaborative documentary and proposes to direct attention to the social, political and historical context of the three projects and to their contents: instead of mere experiments in collaborative photographic practices, the archives may be construed as public spheres for collective self-imagining, and in particular for imagining the national community.Karine Chambefort-KayAssociation Française d'Etudes AméricainesarticleDocumentary photographycollaborative documentaryonline photographic archiveSimon RobertsMapping Main StreetElection ProjectHistory AmericaE-FAmericaE11-143ENFRTransatlantica : Revue d'Études Américaines, Vol 2 (2015)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR
topic	Documentary photography collaborative documentary online photographic archive Simon Roberts Mapping Main Street Election Project History America E-F America E11-143
spellingShingle	Documentary photography collaborative documentary online photographic archive Simon Roberts Mapping Main Street Election Project History America E-F America E11-143 Karine Chambefort-Kay Collaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community
description	This article studies three collaborative documentary photographic projects, The Polling Place Photo Project, Mapping Main Street (United States, 2008 and 2009) and Simon Roberts’s Election Project (Great Britain, 2010), which operated with similar goals and modes—to re-engage the public and citizens by committing them to building an online archive of images. The features of the collaborative documentary mode are analysed as a number of strategies involving the authority of amateurs, forms of crowdsourcing and a new kind of agency as photographs are produced by multiple contributors and displayed online. As these strategies seem to be photographic emulations of the democratic process, the question arises of the apparent correspondence between such strategies and the explicit purpose of enhancing citizenship and democracy or fostering involvement and community. Is the medium the message in collaborative documentary? This study shows the limits of a technology-oriented approach to the collaborative documentary and proposes to direct attention to the social, political and historical context of the three projects and to their contents: instead of mere experiments in collaborative photographic practices, the archives may be construed as public spheres for collective self-imagining, and in particular for imagining the national community.
format	article
author	Karine Chambefort-Kay
author_facet	Karine Chambefort-Kay
author_sort	Karine Chambefort-Kay
title	Collaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community
title_short	Collaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community
title_full	Collaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community
title_fullStr	Collaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community
title_full_unstemmed	Collaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community
title_sort	collaborative documentary photo projects: from techno-utopia to imagined community
publisher	Association Française d'Etudes Américaines
publishDate	2015
url	https://doaj.org/article/f56c222554074faf933fc0ab00c6f00b
work_keys_str_mv	AT karinechambefortkay collaborativedocumentaryphotoprojectsfromtechnoutopiatoimaginedcommunity
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Collaborative Documentary Photo Projects: from Techno-utopia to Imagined Community

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