643220

research-article2016
VCJ0010.1177/1470357216643220Visual CommunicationZappavigna: Social media photography

visual communication
A rtic l e

Social media photography: construing

subjectivity in Instagram images

M ic h e l e Z appavi g n a
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

A b stract
This article explores interpersonal meaning in social media photographs,
using the representation of motherhood in Instagram images as a case
study. It investigates the visual choices that are made in these images to
construe relationships between the represented participants, the photog-
rapher, and the ambient social media viewer. The author draws upon exist-
ing work on the visual systems of point of view and focalization to explore
interpersonal meaning in these images, and proposes that an additional
system – subjectification – is needed to account for the kinds of relation-
ship between the viewer and the photographer that are instantiated in social
photographs, as well as the ways in which subjectivity is signaled in these
images. The dataset analyzed is the entire Instagram feed of a single user
who posts images of her experience of motherhood and a collection of 500
images using the hashtag #motherhood.

K e y words
Instagram • motherhood • multimodal discourse analysis • point of view •
social media • subjectivity

1 . S ocia l P h oto g rap h y

Sharing images online via social networking services such as Instagram is a
pervasive practice. At the time of writing, at least 20 billion images had been
shared via Instagram, a mobile application developed in 2010 for the iPhone.
Instagram allows users to take photographs, apply digital photographic fil-
ters, and upload the image, together with a short caption, to its social net-
working website. The affordances of mobile devices paired with social media
applications such as Instagram has meant that ‘the everyday lives of individu-
als are being remediated into new contexts of social visibility and connection’

Visual Communication 2016

Vol. 15(3) 271–292
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI 10.1177/1470357216643220
 (Vivienne and Burgess, 2013). Since smartphones are typically used by an
individual, images captured with these devices ‘relate directly with that one
user’s everyday point of view and experience’ (Chesher, 2012: 106). As such,
they are interesting studies in how subjectivity is construed through visual
choices. Throughout this article, I will use the term ‘social photograph’ to refer
to images of this kind posted to social networking services.
While camera phone photography has accumulated a body of research
(Hjorth, 2009), and there has been widespread interest in the phenomenon
of ‘selfies’ (self-portraits taken with the front-facing camera of a smartphone)
(Bruno et al., 2014; Schwarz, 2010; Walker, 2005), there has been little research
on social photography that explores the meanings made through the visual
choices construed in social media images. Research targeted at photographic
apps such as Instagram is in its infancy and has focused on human behavior
dynamics and network structure (Ferrara et al., 2014), temporal patterning
and timescales (Hochman and Manovich, 2013), and more theoretical dimen-
sions of use in relation to contemporary notions of personal photography
(Champion, 2012). Most of this research focuses on the context of Instagram
usage or its technical dimensions, rather than the specific visual meanings
made in the images.
One way in which social media has influenced camera phone pho-
tography is through affording the expression of a form of visual co-presence
arising out of the temporal nature of social streaming technologies, inflected
by the portability of mobile media. These affordances mean that a style of
‘you could be here with me’ photography has emerged in which photogra-
phers include part of themselves in the image and invite the viewer to imag-
ine themselves into the frame. Given the relative ease of taking out a mobile
device, both within the rhythm of a domestic routine, or while navigating
public space, visual sharing can approach synchronous time. In other words,
images, delivered either to massive online audiences or to smaller networks of
associates can be posted and viewed in what is referred to as ‘real-time’. Older
forms of camera phone photography have afforded a similar ‘intimate visual
co-presence’ through the sharing of ‘an ongoing stream of viewpoint specific
photos’ with close associates (Ito and Okabe, 2005). In social photography, we
see a broadening of the reach of this intimate sharing to ambient viewers not
known by the photographer.

2 . I n sta g ram
Instagram is a social photography ‘app’ designed to run on a smartphone
through which the social media user can make visual and textual meanings,
and the ambient viewer can interact with those meanings. Apps are ‘bundles
of meaning and functionality each marked by its own distinctive name and
icon’ (Chesher, 2012: 98) that may be purchased via online stores through a
smartphone. Instagram affords a number of semiotic modes to the user, such

272 Visual Communication 15(3)

as visual and written modalities, as well as imposing a number of semiotic
constraints on the dimensions of the image and the length of the caption. The
service may be thought of as ‘neo-retro’ (Chesher, 2012) in the way that it
nostalgically positions itself in relation to past photographic practices such as
Polaroid photography:

When we were kids we loved playing around with cameras. We loved

how different types of old cameras marketed themselves as ‘instant’ –
something we take for granted today. We also felt that the snapshots
people were taking were kind of like telegrams in that they got sent
over the wire to others – so we figured why not combine the two?
(Instagram, 2014)

This description of the design principle underlying Instagram suggests the

important role that temporality holds to the value of these images. Despite the
potential for ‘instant’ image publication, it is not the case that most Instagram
images are simply rough ‘point and shoot’ style photos with little regard to
design. Instagram images usually make use of a set of post-processing tech-
niques such as filtering, cropping, blurring, etc. – image manipulation func-
tionality that is made available inside the Instagram application. They can be
seen to involve a complex interplay of what Bakhtin (1981) refers to as ‘artis-
tic’ genres, that work in the service of aesthetic function, and ‘extra-artistic’
genres, that are grounded in particular, often domestic and banal, contexts.
Instagram may be classed a social networking service since it allows
users to create a personal profile and ‘following’ relationships with other users.
These relationships are asymmetrical as users are not required to reciprocate.
Most social networking services have in common a number of basic functions:
profile creation, the ability to generate a list of affiliated users, privacy custom-
ization, and a mechanism for viewing the activities of affiliated users (boyd,
2010). These affiliated users are often referred to as ‘friends’ (e.g. Facebook
friends) or ‘followers’ (e.g. Twitter followers). boyd (2010) suggests that social
networking services have a number of characteristic attributes: persistence
(capture and archiving of content), replicability (duplication of content), scal-
ability (broad visibility of content) and searchability (access to content via
search). As a social networking service, Instagram is a vehicle for photo distri-
bution and Instagram images an example of Jenkins et al.’s (2013) concept of
‘spreadable media’, that is, media which is shared by audiences for their own
purposes within participatory cultures.
A user’s stream of images is an unfolding construal of identity in
which the particular phenomena photographed are a presentation of per-
sonal style. The images appear as an unfolding ‘feed’ of content in reverse
chronological order on their homepage within the site. Figure 1 is an example
of a user’s photographic feed, presented in a chronologically unfolding grid
of thumbnail images. When the viewer clicks on an image, a larger version

Zappavigna: Social media photography 273

274
Visual Communication 15(3)
Figure 1. Flickarika’s Instagram feed (left) and an example of an individual post (right).
Figure 2. An example of a ‘selfie’.

of the photograph together with its caption is displayed. Above the caption
is the user’s chosen icon and username, and a timestamp showing when the
image was posted to the service. Below the caption are the names of other
users who have ‘favorited’ the post, indicating positive assessment of the
image. There are also two comments that have been posted about the image,
one by another user, and a reply by the photographer.
In a manner agnate to the textual restrictions placed on Twitter posts
(140 characters per post), Instagram imposes a set of visual limitations on
posts, making this service an interesting study in meaning-making within a
constrained environment. For example, the image dimensions are limited to a
square cropped frame, and the verbiage restricted to 2200 characters includ-
ing up to 30 hashtags. In addition, the set of photographic filters that may
be applied to an image is constrained to the 10 filters shown in Figure 11.
Of course, users may find means to circumvent these limitations, such as
importing images created with other systems, but the general design principle
appears to be image production under these defined constraints.
In terms of ideational content, images containing faces appear to gen-
erate the most ‘likes’ and comments (Bakhshi et al., 2014), and the most com-
mon type of image is what is popularly known as the ‘selfie’, a form of self por-
trait taken with the front camera of a smartphone (Figure 2) (Hu et al., 2014).
This form of image has become ‘an extensive everyday art form for ordinary
people’ (Lüders et al., 2010: 960). As we will see later, selfies are an emerging
visual genre that are very interesting in terms of the ways in which subjectivity
and the photographer–viewer relationship are construed.

3 . I n t e rp e rso n a l R e sourc e s i n I ma g e s
The interpersonal meaning made in an image centers on how it represents
particular kinds of ‘social relation between the producer, the viewer and
the object represented’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 42). Kress and Van

Zappavigna: Social media photography 275

 Leeuwen propose a number of systems of meaning that are relevant to how
the viewer is positioned by an image. These systems focus on the relationship
established between the viewer and the represented participants. For exam-
ple, the system of SOCIAL DISTANCE centers on how the participants are
framed, with a close-up shot realising intimacy and mid to long-range shots
realizing increasing social distance. The ATTITUDE system on the other hand
describes the relative subjectivity or objectivity of the image; for instance, the
degree of involvement that is realised by the way in which perspective impacts
the viewing relationship, with a horizontal ‘front on’ angle construing involve-
ment and an oblique angle construing detachment. In addition, the system of
CONTACT describes whether the image is making an offer or demand.
Two systems of interpersonal meaning play a particularly important
role in the way Instagram users represent themselves and others in social pho-
tographs: point of view (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006) or focalization (Painter
et al., 2013), and what I refer to as subjectification (Zhao and Zappavigna,
2015). These two systems of meaning are complementary: the former is about
how the visual choices made in the image create a relationship between the
represented participants and the viewer, while the latter is about the relationship
set up between the image producer and the viewer. As mentioned above in ref-
erence to the INVOLVEMENT system, Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) suggest
that the camera angle of an image is involved in construing point of view, with
horizontal angles encoding involvement (e.g. a frontal angle construing direct
involvement with the represented participants), and vertical angles encoding
power relations (e.g. a high angle construing power over the represented par-
ticipants). Building on these ideas, and concepts from narratology of ‘who sees’
(Genette, 1980), Painter et al. (2013) developed the system of ‘focalisation’ for
exploring how picture books help children learn how to ‘read’ the viewer–image
relationship construed in narrative texts by visual choices that guide the child
into adopting different kinds of ‘viewing personae’. Narrative studies of point
of view typically distinguish between the voice ‘who tells’ us the story and the
persona through whose eyes we ‘see’ the unfolding narrative, a perspective that
may shift as the narrative unfolds. In terms of visual images embedded in nar-
rative texts, focalisation is about the viewing position that is represented within
this unfolding narrative: ‘are readers in eye contact with characters, or observ-
ing them, and if observing are they observing directly or vicariously (through
the eyes of one of the characters as it were)’ (Martin, 2008: 13). Focalisation has
been used to analyse images in various contexts from children’s picture book
narratives (Martin, 2008; Painter et al., 2013), comics (Mikkonen, 2012), ani-
mated movies (Unsworth, 2014) to fictional films (Schlickers, 2009).
According to Painter et al.’s (2013) framework, an image may either
engage the viewer in contact, through the gaze of the character out to the
viewer, or invite the viewer to observe in images with no gaze. For example,
the selfie image in Figure 2 depicts a direct gaze out to viewers, inviting them
to participate in direct contact. At the same time, in narrative texts, the image

276 Visual Communication 15(3)

can be mediated through either an inscribed ‘as character’ choice (e.g. part
of the character such as hands, feet, or shadow depicted as emerging from
the lower frame) or ‘along with character’ (e.g. the backview of a character
depicted in the foreground signaling a shared view). Mediation may also be
inferred through a sequence of images through the choice of angle and the
kind of affect displayed in the represented participants.

4 . S u b j e ctivit y i n S ocia l P h oto g rap h s

While point of view and focalization are helpful for exploring the relationship
construed between the viewer and the represented participants in an image,
a new description is needed to explain the relationship construed in social
photographs between the photographer and the viewer. The affordances of the
smartphone, the device most commonly used to take social photographs, are
conducive to shooting images where the subjectivity of the photographer is
signaled either by compositional choices or through inclusion of parts of the
photographer’s body within the frame. A discourse of self is ‘activated’ via the
Instagram user’s profile, featuring a profile picture and username (Figure 1). In
other words, we know that the body parts in the images are the photographer’s
because of this profile, and that it would not be in keeping with the dominant
social practice to upload another user’s photographs (though this is techni-
cally possible). The essential principle behind a user’s Instagram stream is an
ongoing display of self to the ambient audience.
The system of meaning at risk, subjectification, is about the subjectiv-
ity the viewer is invited to vicariously assume or imagine in relation to the
image. Subjectivity is a concept that has been applied to images across differ-
ent disciplines and includes work in photography theory (e.g. Sontag, 1977)
and media studies (e.g. Berger, 2008; Oguibe, 1998). Subjectification differs
from the focalization and point of view systems in the sense that the relation-
ship is not one of interaction with the represented participants by way of gaze,
but instead a relationship of ‘imagining oneself as being’ or ‘being in fusion
with’ the image producer. For example, consider the image in Figure 3. While
the gaze of the baby away from the viewer suggests an observe relationship in
terms of focalization, we cannot see the gaze of the participant whose legs are
represented. Because of the classifying function of the Instagram profile, we
know that the legs depicted must belong to the photographer. The ambient
viewer can infer this relation from the body part as well as the compositional
structure (legs emerging from the bottom of the frame) suggestive of a seated
or reclining photographer. The ambient viewer shares the perspective of the
photographer, being able to see what they can see from this seated position.
Due to the affordances of ‘real-time’ image-posting, as well as the visual struc-
ture, the viewer shares vicariously the represented experience.
While this article focuses qualitatively on a single Instagram user as
a case study as well as a 500-image corpus of images tagged #motherhood,
the subjectification network was developed based on data collected in a larger

Zappavigna: Social media photography 277

 Figure 3. An example of an Instagram image.

collaborative project. This project involved larger-scale data across three dif-
ferent (social) media platforms: Tumblr, Instagram, and Frankie, an inde-
pendent life style publication. The detailed methodology has been discussed
elsewhere (see Zhao and Zappavigna, 2015). In brief, the development of the
descriptive categories in the system network follows the basic principle of
grounded theory. We start with sampling images from one individual user
each on Tumblr and Instagram until we reach data saturation. As we have
chosen individual users who post with a high frequency (e.g. the Tumblr user
we have chosen posted on average 130 photos a month), data saturation is
reached around the three-month benchmark, that is three-months’ worth of
image posts by each individual user. Once a preliminary network was devel-
oped, we then checked the descriptive categories against a second dataset. We
collected the second dataset using a hashtag search (i.e. the ‘#’ used to tag an
image, e.g. #coffee) in Gramfeed (a tag search engine for Instagram) and using
the Tumblr tag search function. In our tag search, we only used ideational (cf.
Halliday and Matthessien, 2004) hashtags (e.g. #coffee, #coffeeshop) to ensure
that the variables we were describing were interpersonal ones, in other words,
keeping the ideational content (i.e. the ‘topic’) of the posts content meant that
we could focus on the different types of interpersonal meaning construed.
The main choice in subjectification is between construing an as photog-
rapher or with photographer viewing position (Figure 4). The former involves
three different kinds of resources for suggesting the subjectivity of the photogra-
pher. In the first choice, the photographer is represented explicitly in the image,
for example via what is popularly known as a selfie. If we do not know anything
of the context, this form of image might be mistaken for a traditional portrait
taken by another party. However, there are typically visual clues suggesting that
the represented participant is the photographer, such as the position of his or her
shoulder or arm, or distortion due to the close focal range. The second choice
in the subjectification system is where the photographer is inferred by inclusion
of part of his or her body in the image. For example, the photographer’s legs in

278 Visual Communication 15(3)

Figure 4. Subjectification (adapted from Zhao and Zappagivna, 2015).

the second image in Figure 4 infer his or her presence as the participant hold-
ing the baby. Finally, the photographer might be implied through compositional
choices, for instance as the person pushing the pram in the third image in Figure
4 or, for example, as a co-participant in a conversation across a table in a café,
signaled by the positioning of a coffee cup in the foreground of the image. By
way of contrast, there are no clues in the visual structure relating to the subjec-
tive presence of the photographer in the with photographer choice. The viewer
will no doubt recognize that the image was taken by a human photographer by
virtue of knowledge of the context of photographic production and sometimes
through coordinating intermodal resources such as labels or captions.
The meaning potential of subjectification is augmented via the techno-
logical affordances of the social streaming platform itself that makes possible
near ‘real-time’ broadcasting of the image to the social network. The close-to-
real-time pace at which images can be posted by the photographer and viewed
by the ambient audience invokes the possibility that the ambient viewer ‘could
be there’, that they are sharing in the experience at the time that it is happen-
ing. In some images this appears to be agnate to the pre-digital ‘wish you were
here’ postcard sent by holidaymakers. For instance, in Figure 3 discussed above,
the visual structure invites the viewer into the frame to share in the experience
represented (sitting with a baby near a fireplace). This type of image might also
involve implied subjectification: for example, images of cups of coffee in the
foreground that are shot from a camera angle suggestive of the photographer’s

Zappavigna: Social media photography 279

 seated eye level and which include a landscape in the background, often accom-
panied by verbiage expressing pleasure about the view.

5 . C as e S tud y : T h e R e pr e s e n tatio n of
M ot h e r h ood i n S ocia l P h oto g rap h y
Writing and posting images online about the everyday experience of mother-
hood is a practice that has evolved alongside social media technologies. This
domain of communication involves a range of multimodal genres that have yet
to be comprehensively mapped, but have been controversially labeled ‘mom-
myblogging’ (Chen, 2013). As an ‘intimate public’, mommyblogging is charac-
terized by networked relationships involved in sharing of personal accounts of
motherhood (Morrison, 2011: 36). These accounts offer insight into ‘the way
that mothers act up and are acted upon … cast[ing] a light into some of the
often-ignored corners of contemporary women’s history’ (Friedman, 2010:
199). Some scholars have viewed mommyblogging as a challenge to traditional
cultural representations of motherhood, while at the same time noting the per-
sistence of mythologies of the ‘good mother’ in framing this discursive com-
munity ( Chen, 2013; Friedman and Calixte, 2009; Lopez, 2009; Powell, 2010).
Central to strong axiological alignments forged in the kind of inter-
active commenting seen in mommyblogging is the sharing of images, most
often of children and activities associated with their care. While these images
might be shared in longform blogs, the increasing popularity of microblog-
ging means that they are often embedded in short character-constrained posts
to social media services such as Twitter or Instagram. Despite interest in this
domain of communication, there has been little research into the images of
motherhood that are shared.

Data collection and analysis

The dataset explored in this study consisted of two sources: 5001 images with
the hashtag #motherhood, and all the images posted to the Instagram feed of
a single Instagram user, ‘Flickarika’, who posts images about her experience of
motherhood. At the time of writing, this user’s feed consisted of 416 images.
Figure 5, a photograph of the user’s 5-month-old son, is an example of an image
from this feed. The subject matter is predominantly Flickarika’s children and
dimensions of her domestic experiences. The most common visual structure
enacted was the portrait, representing 80 per cent of the images in her feed.
Almost all of these were portraits depicting one or more of the photographer’s
two children. The remaining 20 per cent of images were fairly evenly distrib-
uted across the traditional ‘genres’ of self portraiture, still life, and landscape,
alongside reposts of other users’ content, and inspirational quotations. These
traditional genres, as we will see later, are accompanied by emerging visual
genres that appear to have been influenced by the affordances of the mobile
smart phone medium with which they were captured.

280 Visual Communication 15(3)

Figure 5. An example of an Instagram image from Flickarika’s feed.

Table 1. Frequency of subjectification features in the #motherhood and Flickarika

datasets.

Feature #motherhood dataset (%) Flickarika dataset (%)

As photographer 18 5.6
Inscribe Infer Imply Inscribe Infer Imply
71 18 11 58 38 4
With photographer 52 78
Non animate participant 22 16.5
Discarded (spam, advertising, etc.) 8 0

All images were annotated using the subjectification network (Figure

4) as a coding scheme and the image annotation software, UAM Image Tool.
The frequency of images conforming to these categories is shown in Table 1.
The frequency analysis shows that the ‘as photographer’ choice is marked and
that the ‘with photographer’ choice seen in traditional portraits remains the
dominant option. Nevertheless, the emergence of ‘as photographer’ subjecti-
fication is worthy of attention as it represents an expansion of the interper-
sonal meaning potential of social images that has remained largely unmapped.
Within the ‘as photographer’ system, the most frequent choice is to inscribe
the photographer through a ‘selfie’. The sections that follow explore each of the
subjectification choices in detail, using examples qualitatively sampled from
Flickarika’s feed to exemplify each of the subjectification choices.

6 . ‘ W it h P h oto g rap h e r ’ S u b j e ctificatio n

Before exploring ‘as photographer’ subjectification, in which the photogra-
pher draws upon visual resources to signal his or her subjective presence in
the image, I will consider ‘with photographer’ subjectification, the less marked
option. Images drawing on this resource do not directly inscribe or imply the

Zappavigna: Social media photography 281

 Figure 6. An example of ‘with photographer’ subjectification.

Figure 7. Examples of annotated images.

photographer’s presence in the visual structure. For example, Figure 6 is an

image of this kind, functioning as a portrait. However, if we consider the inter-
modal coordination between this image and its caption, as well as its position-
ing within the social media feed (activating a discourse of self), we can see that
these other resources are performing the work of signaling the photographer’s
subjectivity. The caption applied to this post was the following:

OMG – he’s asleep — it’s a miracle — quick better get my sleep deprived
self off to bed! What a long week this has been!!

This caption explicitly inscribes Flickarika’s attitudinal reaction to the image,

performing the semiotic work of sharing this user’s personal experience that
in other images in her feed is achieved through subjectification.
Two types of image were very common in Flickarika’s Instagram feed
that draw on the ‘with photographer’ system: the annotated portrait and the
collage portrait, both created with third party apps running on the user’s smart-
phone. While the visual structure does not inscribe, infer or imply the presence
of the photographer directly, if we consider dimensions such as the image–text
relationship realized in the annotated captions and the image–layout relation-
ship realized in the collage layout, the authorial ‘voice’ of the photographer does
appear to be at risk. This voice is of an annotator and a curator of experience
respectively. The annotation in the images shown in Figure 7 at once catalogues
experience (e.g. images 3 and 4) as well as attitudinally orienting the viewer

282 Visual Communication 15(3)

Figure 8. Examples of collage portraits.

toward that experience (e.g. images 1 and 3). Similarly, the layout employed
in the images shown in Figure 8 relates to the overall discourse of personal
curation activated by the chronologically unfolding social media feed. Here the
photographer operates as a curator selecting which dimensions of experience
to include are collected in the image.

7 . M e diat e d P ortraitur e : ‘ A s P h oto g rap h e r ’

S u b j e ctificatio n
While all portraiture is in a sense mediated by the subjectivity of the photog-
rapher, social photographs display particular tendencies that foreground this
subjectivity in ways that have not been routinely seen before in popular per-
sonal photography. As noted above, Flickarika’s feed consists predominantly
of portraits, and, while many of these are similar to traditional portraits, there
are images that incorporate visual choices that appear specific to the genres of
social photography. These choices arise out of two attributes of smartphone
cameras: portability and pervasiveness. Both of these variables mean that
the camera is likely to be with the photographer during their daily activities,
influencing the choice of subject matter, and also mean that camera angles
emphasizing the perspective of the photographer are more likely to be used.
The slim construction of the device affords flexibility in terms of its position-
ing in relation to the subject. The device can also be held in one hand while
the photographer is doing something else (e.g. holding a child). In addition,
as already mentioned, the temporality of the social network to which these
images are posted as a chronologically unfolding stream of content, privilege a
‘you could be here with me’ style of photography since the ambient viewer may
view the image in ‘real-time’ as soon as it is posted. Both the medium used to
take the photograph, and the channel on which it is published, are thus ori-
ented toward construing different forms of visual co-presence. In other words,
social photography lends itself to a portraiture where the subjectivity of the
photographer is either directly inscribed, implied, or inferred.
Selfies are the most obvious instances where the photographer’s sub-
jectivity is inscribed in the image. While self-portraiture is the most frequent
genre seen on Instagram (Hu et al., 2014), there is only one instance of a self-
portrait of Flickarika in the dataset (Figure 2). All other selfies in the feed

Zappavigna: Social media photography 283

 Figure 9. Examples of ‘selfies’.

Figure 10. Examples of images incorporating parts of the photographer’s body.

are images of the user with her children (Figure 9), suggesting how integral
motherhood is to this user’s identity. This type of selfie offers a view of moth-
erhood as relationship. In terms of subjectification, these images involve an ‘as
photographer: inscribe’ choice since they involve explicit representation of the
photographer as a participant in the image. The ambient viewers are looking
at the image as if they were the photographer in the sense that they are seeing
a similar (though reversed) image to the image shown to the photographer on
the smartphone screen.
One common pattern is the choice to include part of the photogra-
pher’s body in the image, for example feet or hands usually extending from
the bottom of the frame (Figure 10). This visual choice infers the presence of
the photographer beyond the edges of the frame, inviting viewers to experi-
ence the image as if they were the photographer, in a kind of fused subjectivity.
This is different to point of view or focalization because the relationship is not
constructed through the gaze of a represented participant, but via the inferred
presence of the photographer manifest in the visual structure.
The first image in Figure 10 was accompanied by the following caption:

Just chillin on a Sunday evening by the fire with this little hand chom-
per!

The caption functions to ground the image in the user’s private experience,
working alongside the visual representation of the woman’s legs to both mark
the experience as her own, and to create an alignment with the ambient viewer
as an imagined co-participant. In other words, somewhat paradoxically, the
choice to include elements of the photographer’s body in the image construes

284 Visual Communication 15(3)

an ‘as photographer’ viewing position at the same time as emphasizing that
what is seen is a unique personal moment in time. In terms of subjectification,
the choice is ‘as photographer: infer’ since we can intuit that the body part
belongs to the photographer based on the visual structure and the discourse
of self-activated by Flickarika’s Instagram profile.
The portraits in Figure 10 also differ from traditional portraits in the
way that the parts of the photographer’s body in the image indicate that an
activity is underway that the photographer is involved in, e.g. relaxing (image
1), feeding (images 2 and 4), and holding (Figure 3). This is a representation
of motherhood as process, in which what once might have been viewed as
mundane practices not worthy of being captured on expensive analogue film,
is presented as central to the construal of identity performed by the mother.

8 . F i l t e ri n g E x p e ri e n c e : R e tro A e st h e tics
a n d P rov e n a n c e
Another dimension of interpersonal meaning regularly seen in social pho-
tographs is a kind of collective faux-nostalgia or ‘instant nostalgia’ (Chesher,
2012) construed through the choice of digital filter applied to the image.
Prior to the advent of digital photography, photographic filters were physical
devices, usually glass or plastic disks, positioned in front of the lens to achieve
a range of photographic effects, from altering color balance to distorting the
image. Digital filters invoke the effects of traditional filters, as well as pro-
viding new options for image manipulation. Instagram offers users a set of
20 prefabricated filters that can be applied to images within the application
(Figure 11). An interesting question is the extent to which this ‘off-the-shelf ’
post-processing of images affects notions of authorship and authenticity in
contexts such as journalism (Alper, 2013). We might also consider how they
inflect the possibilities of subjectification.
As Figure 11 suggests, many of these filters, both in terms of their
visual effect and naming, evoke ‘bygone’ eras. For instance, they allow the
user to manipulate visual dimensions of the image that invoke older media
and conventions (e.g. polaroid photography). ‘Retro’-style filters of this kind
evoke the physical imperfections of analogue film processing through effects
mimicking phenomena such as light leaks and vignetting. The 1977 filter, for
example, increases the brightness of an image, but fades the hues, to give the
feel of an old photograph (Figure 12). Similarly, the Earlybird filter applies
a shadowy vignette, decreases saturation, and emphasizes warm, brown
hues. Some of the names of these photographic filters invite us to associ-
ate them with particular historical periods (e.g. 1977) or particular places
(e.g. Nashville), though others are more esoteric references unlikely to be
known by users (e.g. Walden, apparently the name of a dog owned by one
of the developers). Interestingly, the simulation of these past photographic
technologies is not aimed at fidelity but instead represents the ‘look of aged

Zappavigna: Social media photography 285

 Figure 11. Instagram filters applied to an image.

Figure 12. Comparing an unfiltered image with an image applying the ‘1977’ filter.

photographs as they appear to us in the present’ (Bartholeyns, 2014: 60), and

this is in keeping with the emphasis that the social stream places on the pres-
ent and ‘real-time’ image capture and sharing.
While any photographic effect invoking the past might be employed nos-
talgically, the social function here appears to be more about rendering more poi-
gnant the present moment, in particular the banal, everyday present moment.
This kind of intensifying of interpersonal meaning is achieved ‘through the
added emotional value provided by a temporal distance that is made visible by a

286 Visual Communication 15(3)

Figure 13. ‘Feeding the Pukekos!’

dated aesthetic’ (Lüders et al., 2010: 960). For example, consider Figure 13 where
the filter faux-ages the image, as if the viewer might be looking at an old photo
from this now-adult’s childhood. This increases the interpersonal value of the
image by drawing on what Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) term the system of
‘provenance’: meaning that is dependent on knowing the cultural origin of the
signifier. This kind of associative meaning has been explored in relation to color,
where provenance is related to ‘the question of “where the colour comes from,
where it has been culturally and historically”, “where we have seen it before”’
(Djonov and Van Leeuwen, 2011: 546), and also in relation to texture (Kress and
Van Leeuwen, 2002: 355), and typography (Djonov and Van Leeuwen, 2011).
While the associations invoked in these different semiotic modes might appear
‘limitless in theory, in practice they are not’ and are tied with the context in
which they are produced within the genre enacted (Van Leeuwen, 2005).

9 . Em e r g i n g V isua l G e n r e s
A genre is ‘a staged, goal-oriented, purposeful activity, in which speakers
engage as members of our culture’ (Martin, 1984: 25). While many textual
genres have been mapped (e.g. recount, narrative, procedure, etc.), social
semiotic work on multimodal genres is still in its infancy. In terms of images,
‘genre’ is a term with a confusing historical usage, on the one hand referring
to ‘genre painting’ of everyday life and also to the hierarchy of genres defined
from the 16th century, including forms such as portrait painting, landscape
painting, and still life. These historical terms are not technical genre labels in
a functional semiotic sense; however, they have proven historically useful for
differentiating between different visual patterns in painting and photography.
One problem with the terminology here is that there is no semiotic differ-
ence between a portrait and a self-portrait without some intermodal relation
signaling that the represented participant is the image producer (e.g. an image
caption in an exhibition) (Zhao, 2014, personal communication).

Zappavigna: Social media photography 287

 Figure 14. An example of a mediated portrait (left) and a mediated still life (right).

Taking the portrait, landscape, and still life as an admittedly problem-

atic starting point, there appear to be a number of visual genres emerging in
social media discourse that are frequently used, though may have yet to stabi-
lize. Two visual genres that draw upon subjectification as a semiotic resource
that were present in Flickarika’s Instagram feed are the ‘mediated portrait’ and
the ‘mediated still life’ (e.g. Figure 14). ‘Mediated landscapes’ are also possible
but were not seen in this user’s feed. Both of these genres have the social func-
tion of forging a form of visual co-presence (where part of the photographer is
presented in the image) as a way of foregrounding the photographer’s subjec-
tivity and the uniqueness of the personal experience portrayed. At the same
time these images function to create an alignment with the ambient social
media viewer positioned as ‘sharing’ in the experience.
The mediated portrait also foregrounds the activity being performed
by the photographer at the time he or she takes the image. In the context of
mommy blogging, this is typically an activity associated with care of the child,
as in the example in Figure 14, showing Flickarika’s hand as she feeds her son a
green smoothie. The image was accompanied by the following caption further
describing the activity taking place:

This morning we’re lapping up a delicious green smoothie from @

soulorganicslimited in #whakatane – nom nom nom #greensmoothie
#cleaneating #bubbaloveshisgreens

The mediated still life, on the other hand, foregrounds the photographer’s
relationship to represented objects, often depicting food or beverages before
or after they are eaten. Depending on the domain, these are often ‘fetishized’
objects such as shoes or coffee (Zhao, 2014, personal communication). For
example, the second image in Figure 14 shows the photographer’s hand hold-
ing the ice-cream that she is about to eat. On the one hand, this visual choice
supports deixis, as she is presenting the object to the ambient viewer. On the
other hand, it functions to foreground her subjectivity as the person about to
eat the ice-cream at that particular point in time in that particular location.

288 Visual Communication 15(3)

1 0 . C o n c l usio n
Social media images represent a definitive shift in personal photographic prac-
tices where we see a foregrounding of the photographer–viewer relationship in
the visual structure. This article has explored the role that subjectification plays in
the construal of this relationship, investigating how visual choices such as includ-
ing part of the photographer in the image operate semiotically. It has also been
suggested that two genres – the mediated portrait, and the mediated still life –
have emerged on social media platforms. These images invite ambient viewers
to approach the image as if they were sharing in the photographer’s subjective
experience and are activated by the discourse of self inherent in social media
(e.g. activated by the social media profile defining the particular user’s feed). The
proliferation of these types of social photographs is partly because of the impact
that the technological affordances of mobile devices and social media apps have
had on the extent to which social photography has become embedded in every-
day life. It also arises out of the desire for ambient forms of social connection, an
impetus driving users to share their subjective experiences with others.

F u n di n g
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, com-
mercial, or not for profit sectors.

Not e
1. This is the maximum amount of images that Instagram’s Terms of
Service allow developers to download from the service.

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 Bio g rap h ica l Not e
MICHELE ZAPPAVIGNA is a Lecturer in the School of the Arts and Media at
the University of New South Wales. Her major research interest is the language
of social media. Recent books include Discourse of Twitter and Social Media
(Continuum, 2012) and Tacit Knowledge and Spoken Discourse (Bloomsbury,
2013). Forthcoming, with R Page, J Unger and D Barton, is Researching
Language and Social Media (Routledge) and, with JR Martin and P Dwyer,
Discourse and Diversionary Justice: An Analysis of Ceremonial Redress in Youth
Justice Conferencing (Palgrave).
Address: School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
NSW 2052, Australia. [email: [email protected]]

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