The presentation will focus on the case study of an online amateur community devoted to instant analogue photography (Polaroid-like). It will be argued that concepts from STS and media studies could be fruitfully used together to enrich the understanding of this practice of "technological resistance" (Kline & Pinch, 1996) to digital photography. On the one hand, concepts drawn from the SCOT tradition will be used to illustrate how photographers are creatively re-appropriating an obsolescent technology, while at the same time opposing its use to the non-use of digital cameras. On the other hand, the concept of "remediation" (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) will prove to be useful to understand how an image-based online community translates the materiality of analogue photography into digital images, in order to produce and share a "resistant" meaning. Thus, the case study will provide an insight into the dialectical tension between digital and earlier media. It will be claimed that a cross-disciplinary approach could achieve a deeper understanding of the socio-material and symbolic dimensions of contemporary, "resistant" photographic practices.
Bolter & Grusin (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Kline & Pinch (1996) 'Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social
Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States', Technology and Culture 37(4):