The proposed project will involve an investigation into the relationship between photographic practices and the body in the digital age. Photography has undergone a major shift since the emergence of digital technologies. The mobile phone camera in particular has democratized access to photography, transforming it into a widely used form of communication practiced across the globe. In parallel to this shift, the platforms on which photographs are shared have grown exponentially: Instagram is now one of the most popular social media sites today. These shifts have had a profound impact on the way that female, male and non-binary bodies are presented, defined, critiqued and disseminated online.
The ubiquity of the camera combined with the profound role of social media on everyday life has had a wide-spread impact on the way that we see, understand and relate to the body. The opportunities for further research and critical analysis are vast. This is a quickly shifting territory making this a timely and much needed research project. The research would build on theories on the softimage (Hoelzl & Marie, 2015), the evolution of the image between digital and analogue spheres (Bohr & Sliwinska, 2018) as well as burgeoning work on transnational and cosmopolitical approaches to bodies, identification and the circulation of lens-based images (Meskimmon, 2010; Arnold & Meskimmon, 2016).
