Transient Images
ISBN: 9781439903285
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Temple University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Digital media.; Social media.; Images Photographic; Information technology;

In this probing study, Eric Freedman focuses on what images from photography, mobile communications, and the Internet reveal about looking. Exploring subjectivity by critically examining the look, he elaborates on the nature of the photographic frame and its relation to interpretive practices. Freedman scrutinizes what he calls "technobiography"--a life written through technology, and considers the movement of personal images into public spaces. He also considers authorship that situates the self as inherently engaged with and inscribed by information technology.

All of the chapters in Transient Images explore Freedman's interest in examining how media technologies activate particular notions of self and community. He provides examples that address trauma--pictures of missing children on milk cartons and episodes of the reality series Intervention--as well as the strategies behind creating and distributing personal advertisements on the Internet. Transient Images draws out the tensions that exist in images circulating in the digital era.


Eric Freedman is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies at Florida Atlantic University.

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