application/pdf
2036-461X
16591
30
en
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - ‘Buy Film Not Megapixel’: Analogue Photography as a Practice of Technological Resistance in the Digital Age
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
18
Projects & Abstracts
2018-03-01
2021-10-06
2018-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Sergio Minniti
2018/03/01
IULM – International University of Languages and Media
2036-461X
30
en
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - ‘Buy Film Not Megapixel’: Analogue Photography as a Practice of Technological Resistance in the Digital Age
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16591/16934
18
‘Buy Film Not Megapixel’: Analogue Photography as a Practice
of Technological Resistance in the Digital Age
Sergio Minniti / Ph.D. Thesis Abstract1
IULM – International University of Languages and Media




   Over the course of the last decade, the simplistic view of technological change
as a linear progress from ‘old’ analogue technologies to ‘new’ digital devices
has been both theoretically and empirically challenged by the spreading of
technologies and practices that illustrate how, within society, the ‘old’ and the
‘new’ are continuously and relationally produced.2
   In the field of photography this phenomenon is exemplified, on the one
hand by the diffusion of the so-called digital retro photography, i.e. the nostalgic
remediation of the old technology by the new one enabled by the diffusion of
digital applications reproducing the aesthetics of film photography, such as
Instagram and Hipstamatic.3 On the other hand, a more complex, and less studied
phenomenon of revitalisation of analogue technology in our contemporary
digital environment has occurred in the field of aspirational amateurism, where
an increasing number of photographers begun to reappropriate and use film
cameras, with the aim of counteracting the ‘dematerialization’ process supposedly
triggered by digital photography and reaffirming the value of photography as a
physical, multisensory experience.
   In this scenario, analogue photographic technologies, such as the ‘toy’ plastic
cameras used by ‘Lomographers’4 and the vintage Polaroid cameras privileged
by ‘Polaroiders’,5 have become prominent actors in a bottom-up attempt to
reinstate the authenticity of the ‘analogue experience’ in a digital world, and to
‘resist’ the ubiquitous adoption of digital technology.
   This dissertation analyses the contemporary reappropriation of film photography
within aspirational amateurism and focuses on the role played by analogue

1
  Ph.D. thesis supervised by Professor Guido Di Fraia. Sergio Minniti’s current affiliation is Yachay
Tech University. For information: sminniti@yachaytech.edu.ec
2
  Simone Natale, ‘There Are No Old Media’, Journal of Communication, 66.4 (2016), 585–603.
3
  Gil Bartholeyns, ‘The Instant Past: Nostalgia and Digital Retro Photography’, in Media and
Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future, ed. by Katharina Niemayer (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 51–69.
4
  Bruna Mitchell de Morais Braga, ‘Creative Possibilities of Analogue Photography: A Dialogue
between the Past and the Present in the Era of Digital Images’, paper presented at the VII World
Congress on Communication and Arts, Vila Real, Portugal, 20-23 April 2014.
5
  Sergio Minniti, ‘Polaroid 2.0. Photo-Objects and Analogue Instant Photography in the Digital
Age’, Tecnoscienza, 7.1 (2016), 17–44.

                                                      Cinéma & Cie, vol. XVIII, no. 30, Spring 2018
                                         Sergio Minniti

cameras and their materiality in the configuration of three photographic practices:
lomography, polaroidism, and pinhole photography. These practices are exemplary
of a phenomenon that Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars Ronald
Kline and Trevor Pinch defined as technological resistance,6 that is, a process of
mutual construction of users and technology guided by a logic of opposition
to mainstream technologies, which is often triggered by the obsolescence of
technical artifacts.7 By adopting this perspective, the dissertation proposes to look
at analogue photography as a present technology rather than a past one, and it
reflects on how the analogue and the digital had co-constituted each other through
a multi-dimensional (cultural, material, and performative) process of opposition.
   The dissertation highlights how the articulation of contemporary ‘resistant’
photographic cultures, practices, and discourses has been grounded on the
establishment of four dichotomies, on the basis of which analogue and digital
photography are opposed: 1) materiality vs. immateriality; 2) unpredictability
vs. control; 3) visual imperfection vs. visual perfection; and 4) photography
as an intense and reflective experience vs. photography as an impulsive act. It
concludes that these elements characterize contemporary analogue amateurism
and culturally justify film enthusiasts’ resistance to digital photography, as well as
their seek for authenticity.
   From a theoretical point of view, the dissertation adopts the STS-informed
integrative theory of practice developed by Elizabeth Shove and her colleagues,8
according to which socio-technical practices can be understood as configurations
of heterogeneous elements intertwined with one another and ascribable to three
main dimensions: symbolic, material, and performative. This perspective is
adopted in order to reconstruct the ways in which, in our contemporary digital
environment, ‘old’ photographic technologies have acquired both a new meaning
and a new social life, and how they have been transformed into ‘resistant’ tools
allowing their users to reinstate the authenticity of the ‘analogue experience’.
   This dissertation is based on empirical data collected during a multi-sited
ethnography9 conducted in Italy between 2014 and 2015. Fieldwork included the
observation of activities organized by six different communities of photographers
devoted to analogue photography, such as workshops, meetings, and exhibitions.
It also included visits to specialized shops and private homes. Forty in-depth semi-
structured interviews with members of the communities were conducted, and over
1,000 photographs documenting practitioners’ activities were also produced.


6
  Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch, ‘Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction
of the Automobile in the Rural United States’, Technology and Culture, 37.4 (1996), 763–795.
7
  See Christina Lindsay, ‘From the Shadows: Users as Designers, Producers, Marketers, Distributors,
and Technical Support’, in How Users Matter: The Co-construction of Users and Technology, ed. by
Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), pp. 29–50.
8
  Elizabeth Shove, Matthew Watson, Martin Hand and Jack Ingram, The Design of Everyday Life
(Oxford: Berg, 2007).
9
   George E. Marcus, ‘Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited
Ethnography’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24 (1995), 95–117.

140
