Review of Digital photography, Family albums and memory on Flickr .
Considering the authors aims
As presented in the abstract the author emphasizes how the way of archiving and distributing images developed during many years. For this article he uses Flicr to introduce changes and similarities of family photography cataloguing and the role memory has influenced in protection from losing images.
Review of Context and content
This document shows that with the evolution of digital photography and diminishing of traditional photography the value of family photos stays the same. These two types of photography has similar motivation- "desire to protect against the passage of time, the desire to express feelings, the social prestige brought by the technology, the ostentatious and personal accomplishment it represents, its recreational value and the evocation of evanescent memories." However, the author quotes Rose, who believes that traditional family photography will not die . During the experiment taken among 35 families from different age group , Rose established that using of digital and traditional photography differed little so it means traditional photography still can exist.
As well author has stressed the importance of relationship between memory and photography because it has a huge role in contemporary society.It is said that photography provides a gateways for remembering the whole life presented in an exact image. Author cites Lissovsky to strenghten the major role of memory: "the event is behind us, but what remains of it inside of me, in the present, is not its consummate past (its 'past perfect'), but that which has detached from the past and leapt into the future (the 'future anterior')"
Using some photo examples from Flicr, author points out that frequency of uploaded photos has a strong effect on family photography. Due to digital technology it is unproblematic to show collection of photos from any period of time : from a photo of ultrasonography to a photo of a whole family. However, author uses Murray quote to emphasize how people are spoiled by ideal circumstances and take photographs as granted: “On these sites (Flickr), photography has become less about the special or rarefied moments of domestic/family living (for such things as holidays, gatherings, baby photos) and more about immediate, rather than fleeting display of one's discovery of the small and mundane (such as bottles, cupcakes, trees, debris, and architectural elements).”
The conclusion author made for this idea is well formed and easy to understand for spectators. He used a lot of literature of other decades to create a strong well planed article. The author held one idea of photograohy through the different timespan and disclosed it in details: "Aspects of memory and digital technology culture, these images provide a diffuse and fragmentary narrative, much like memory itself, and are used to engender an encounter between past and future in the present." The conclusion is well justified and confirmed carefully by the text but I didn't find some information in the text about intimacy of digital family photography and how other people in the website can easily judge a family by photographs in wrong way. I think if author had added this fact, his article would have been better.
P.S. , I tried so hard to write this review and I know there is a lot of mistakes here.