Domestic Photography and Technological Paths

Abstract

In this chapter, we go through the key concepts in our historical study. We use the term ‘domestic photography’ to describe the photographic activities of ordinary people taking and using images for non-professional purposes. Also, in our use of the term we focus on the kind of use in which photography is not a hobby as such but embedded in other activities. In charting our journey through domestic photography, we use the concept of ‘a technological path’ to describe an era of incremental development of technologies, stable domestic practices, and gradual change of relations between the actors constituting the technology. Approaching domestic photography as a history of technological paths enables us to look at it from a ‘macro’ perspective and to identify outlines and contours that could be overlooked from a more ‘micro’ perspective. From this angle of approach, we see three paths, each of which began with a technological discontinuity (i.e., a disruptive/radical innovation) and after an ‘era of ferment’ stabilised into a technological path.