Tristan, P., 2021.

Waves of Exposure - Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC)

The pandemic has produced a unique moment
in the history of photography, never before has one
theme been explored simultaneously by so many
different image makers, from photojournalists to
portraitists, artists to activists, documentarians to
doctors. The power of photography in this emergency
lies in its apparent capacity to capture and respond
to collective trauma, and it is being used during this
crisis in myriad ways to make sense of a previously
unimaginable new world order. The pandemic is a
global media event like no other, in the sense that it
is not only being witnessed by audiences around the
world simultaneously, but experienced in their own
lives too. Equally, the effect on media professionals
is highly unusual: usually reporting on the lives of
others, their cameras now turn on their own lived
emotional experiences of the pandemic.
The pandemic has further underscored social
media's centrality in modern life. Under lockdown,
it has become for many people the primary means
of connection, resulting in an explosion of creativity,
self-expression and peer support within a primarily
visual form. Arguably, the pandemic has seen
Just as it is all but impossible
to recall major historic events
like 9/11 or the Vietnam War
without evoking photographs,
the Covid-19 pandemic is
producing images that will
shape the memories of future
generations, as well as being part
of the ongoing process of understanding and adjustment to its
catastrophic impact.
Photography and the Archive Research Centre
(PARC)
Paul Lowe and Jennifer Good
Jurgenson's concept of 'the
social photo' take on a radical
new dimension, as visual
images have become a currency
through which we can express
our psychological, emotional
and experiential states of mind
in real time to each other.
The extraordinary outpouring
of images in response to the
#MassisolationFORMAT open
call demonstrates this social
nature of the image, as new
networks of connections
have been made in real time
as image makers reach out via
Instagram to the world, and
the world has replied and
interacted directly. Written by Paul Lowe and
Jennifer Good