Slow glass: a case for photomedia literacy

Abstract

Like many fields, visual literacy is enamoured with digital cameras. They are convenient for classrooms, can accelerate learning, and can facilitate research where verbal language cannot. However, exclusive use puts at risk the possibility of experiencing affordances of other photomedia. This paper argues for diversifying photomedia used in research. While it recognises that digital cameras have a role to play in developing visual skills, particularly when resources are limited, it posits that sole use of digital cameras obfuscate other possibilities for expression. Adopting autoethnographic description, affordances were considered of three photomedia as used during a rephotography project along Japan’s north-eastern coast between 2019 and 2022. Setting out photomedia literacy as a competence that complements rather than competes with a range of other literacies (e.g. media literacy, digital literacy, information literacy), the paper concludes with challenges for any scholars thinking that digital cameras are convenient one-stop solutions.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Photomedia literacy
• visual literacy
• affordance
• rephotography
• temporality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The first sidelight in particular was originally a short story titled ‘Light of Other Days’ published in 1966. It described a couple’s encounter with a glass farmer whose only remaining connection with his wife and children following a car accident was the phasing image of them in the slow glass windows of the family home.

2 For example, Shaw described covert governmental plans for controllable slow glass that include showering a city with tiny particles to record and monitor everyone all the time, as well as forms of torture and brainwashing that involved using ‘contact lenses’ pre-loaded with others’ experiences in order to exert pressure and influence.

3 There are two translations of this essay, the original 1984 one by Flusser himself and the Angelo Matthews translation in 2000.

4 I am thinking here of examples such as Casey Neistat (https://www.youtube.com/user/caseyneistat) or Abroad in Japan (https://www.youtube.com/@AbroadinJapan).

5 This includes personal projects, such as that of Japanese photographer Naoya Hatakeyama, but also large-scale efforts such as Google’s Memories of the Future that charts reconstruction through Google Street View (Google, 2011).

6 Higher-end digital cameras (e.g. Fujifilm GFX50sii) may have an option to make a one-hour exposure but the potential damage to the digital sensor may make development of this capability less likely.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science under Grant 19K22994.