The smartphone is perhaps one of the few items that can define our time in terms of its ubiquity and mobility. The photographic feature of various types of smartphones has also drawn the attention of consumers and manufacturers in recent years, with the consecutive upgrades of built-in cameras, photo-editing and sharing apps. From the taking, retouching, to publishing a photograph, smartphone photography, coupled with social media, has become important in understanding the relationships between digital image and sociality, aesthetics and identity. This article examines several new developments such as the rise of ‘professional amateurs’ and the selfie within the Chinese context. It then attempts to develop theories of smartphone photography that incorporate these developments. Using ethnographic analysis and interviews, this article aims to theorize smartphone photography as a series of practices that reveal local and individual specifications that traverse technicity, sociality and aesthetics. It shows how this has had a significant impact on Chinese people’s economic and social life.
AlexanDENG. (2017, September20). Answering ‘why do we prefer taking photographs with smartphones more and more?’Zhihu. https://www.zhihu.com/question/49132289
AndersonR. (2016). Visual politics and material semiotics: The digital camera’s translation of political protest. In CruzE.LehmuskallioA. (Eds.), Digital photography and everyday life: Empirical studies on material visual practices (pp. 141–159). Routledge.
BartholeynsG. (2014). The instant past: Nostalgia and digital retro photography. In NiemeyerK. (Ed.), Media and nostalgia: Yearning for the past, present and future (pp. 51–69). Palgrave Macmillan.
BourdieuP. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste (NiceR., Trans.). Harvard University Press.
8.
BourdieuP. (1990). Photography: A middle-brow art (WhitesideS., Trans.). Polity Press.
9.
CaoX., et al (2019). 同伴接纳在青少年自尊与手机自拍效用关系中的中介作用 [Studying on the relationship between self-esteem and selfie utility of mobile phone among teenagers mediated by peer acceptance]. Journal of Guizhou Education University, 35(3), 38–43.
10.
CaoduroE. (2014). Photo filter apps: Understanding analogue nostalgia in the new media ecology. Networking Knowledge: Journal of the Meccsa Postgraduate Network, 7(2), 67–82.
11.
ChaeJ. (2016). Virtual makeover: Selfie-taking and social media use increase selfie-editing frequency through social comparison. Computers in Human Behavior, 66, 370–376.
12.
ChangT. (2015). 网络环境下自拍文化的亚文化视角解读 [A subculture perspective interpretation of selfie culture under the network environment] [Master’s thesis]. Department of Journalism and Communication, Lanzhou University.
13.
ChenL.GohC. F.YifanS.RasliA. (2017). Integrating Guanxi into technology acceptance: An empirical investigation of WeChat. Telematics and Informatics, 34(7), 1125–1142.
China Internet Network Information Center. (2019, November12). The 44th statistical report on internet development in China.
17.
CruzE.MeyerE. (2012). Creation and control in the photographic process: iPhones and the emerging fifth moment of photography. Photographies, 5(2), 203–221.
FallonK. (2018). The pencil of identity: Instagram as inadvertent (female) autobiography. In UlfsdotterB.RogersA. B. (Eds.), Female agency and documentary strategeis: Subjectivities, identities and activism (pp. 9–22). University of Edinburgh Press.
MillerD. (2015). Photography in the age of Snapchat. Anthropology and Photography, 1, 1–17.
34.
MillerD.CostaE.HaynesN.McDonaldT.NicolescuR.SinananJ.SpyerJ.VenkatramanS.WangX. (2016). How the world changed social media. University College London Press.
35.
MillsJ.MustoS.WilliamsL.TiggemannM. (2018). ‘Selfie’ harm: Effects on mood and body image in young women. Body Image, 27, 86–92.
36.
MotaS. (2016). ‘Today I dressed like this’: Selling clothes and playing for celebrity: Self-representation and consumption on Facebook. In CruzE.LehmuskallioA. (Eds.), Digital photography and everyday life: Empirical studies on material visual practices (pp. 35–51). Routledge.
PinkS. (2016). Photographic places and digital wayfaring: Conceptualizing relationships between cameras, connectivities and transformed localities. In CruzE.LehmuskallioA. (Eds.), Digital photography and everyday life: Empirical studies on material visual practices (pp. 186–190). Routledge.
42.
PinneyC. (1997). Camera Indica: The social life of Indian photographs. Reaktion Books.
43.
PoushterJ.BishopC.ChweH. (2018, June19). Social media use continues to rise in developing countries but plateaus across developed ones: Digital divides remain, both within and across countries. Pew Research Center.
44.
RobertsonR. (1995). Glocalization: Time-spaced and homogeneity-heterogeneity. In FeatherstonM.LashS.RobertsonR. (Eds.), Global modernities (pp. 25–44). SAGE.
TaiZ. (2014). The great firewall. In EsareyA.KluverR. (Eds.), The Internet in China: 1980s-2000s cultural, political, and social dimensions (pp. 64–74). Berkshire Publishing Group.
TianX. (2018). Face-work on social media in China: The presentation of self on RenRen and Facebook. In KentM.EllisK.XuJ. (Eds.), Chinese social media: Social, cultural, and political implications (pp. 92–105). Routledge.
52.
TittonM. (2018). Blogging the female self: Authorship, self-performance and identity politics in fashion blogs. In UlfsdotterB.RogersA. B. (Eds.), Female agency and documentary strategeis: Subjectivities, identities and activism (pp. 38–53). University of Edinburgh Press.
53.
UimonenP. (2016). ‘I’m a picture girl!’ Mobile photography in Tazania. In CruzE.LehmuskallioA. (Eds.), Digital photography and everyday life: Empirical studies on material visual practices (pp. 19–34). Routledge.
54.
van DijckJ. (2010). Flickr and the culture of connectivity: Sharing views, experiences, memories. Memory Studies, 4(4), 401–415.
55.
VilliM. (2016). Photographs of place in phonespace: Camera phones as a location-aware mobile technology. In CruzE.LehmuskallioA. (Eds.), Digital photography and everyday life: Empirical studies on material visual practices (pp. 107–121). Routledge.
WangX. (2016). Social media in industrial China. University College London Press.
58.
WrightC. (2013). The echo of things: The lives of photographs in the Solomon Islands. Duke University Press.
59.
YangG. (2012). A Chinese internet? History, practice and globalization. Chinese Journal of Communication, 5(1), 49–54.
60.
YangY. (2020). Photography and social life: An ethnography of Chinese amateur photography online [Doctoral dissertation]. Department of Anthropology, University College London.
61.
ZhangW. (2017). Smartphone photography in urban China. International Journal of Social, Behavioral Educational, Economic, Business and Industrial Engineering, 11(1), 231–239.
