Flickr Photostream: A Contemporary Life Narrative?

After reading my fellow classmates’ blog posts on how different apps and websites could be considered to be life narratives (particularly Margot’s blog post on the new app Bitstrips and Makoto’s blog post on Youtube) I began to become interested in how other websites could potentially be seen as autobiographical narratives. So I decided to investigate whether Flickr, an image and video hosting website, could be considered to be a life narrative. Although not as a popular as in its early days, Flickr still remains the preferred photo storage and sharing sites out there for professional photographers; for the rest of us, Instagram and Tumblr seem to have become the norm. Having recently accessed Flickr, I noticed that several changes have occurred: not only does it now allow for visitors to access the website from their Facebook and Google+ accounts (in addition to the original Yahoo! account) but its layout has undergone a complete transformation. The Flickr layout that I remember was simple, minimalistic and had a sheer white background. The new design, however, echoes the mosaic-like home page of Pinterest, with a pitch-black background and an infinite-scrolling feature. Much like the photos Tumblr, each photograph here has a feature at its bottom-left allowing visitors to like, comment or share the photographs on various virtual platforms (namely, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Tumblr).

 

Browsing through the website, it seems that Flickr has taken more than one cue from its highly popular contemporaries. Whereas before the user’s personalized page focused solely on the photographs that the user had uploaded, it now boasts a number of new sub sections. To start off, there is the photostream section, which assembles photographs from the user and arranges them in reverse chronological order, as well as the “sets”, “favorites and “creations” sections, that remind me of Youtube’s personalized page. Given the multitude of features provided, the user has the freedom to control and directly modify the content in their page, thus they are able to mold their page to reflect specific dimensions of their personality- or rather, to showcase a self that they yearn to be. Here, the user speaks merely by virtue of the visual; the textual is most often minimal and is not read, although it provides context that is often necessary to understand the relevance and importance of a photograph. While often photographs are uploaded with no specific intention, but rather simply because they are perceived to be aesthetically pleasing after undergoing digital manipulation, (example) some users include photographs in an attempt to track momentous parts of their journey- a moment of relaxation in their life, the celebration of a birthday.

 

Likewise, often a series of photographs can be gathered and used to give life to marginalized subjects and minority groups, and thus create a collective life narrative. For instance the user Huzzatul Mursalin’s photostream provides insight into the daily lives of people in Dhaka, Bangladesh capturing them as they perform their daily tasks, dance in their streets, interact in the food markets. Altogether these photographs provide glimpses into fragments of their life, reflecting the daily existence of these workers and their family: while some scenes are colored with happiness and beauty, others capture them in moments of motion as they immerse themselves within their tasks. As the user binds these photographs together, he constructs his own version on the collective life narrative of the Bangladeshi people. Nevertheless, the collection of photographs is certainly limited by the fact that a selection of photographs have been actively chosen and thus they are not representative of all the lives of the Bangladeshi people.

 

What do you think? Do you believe that it is possible to see the website Flickr as an autobiographical practice? If so, does its architecture facilitate the presentation of personal life narratives or collective life narratives? Let me know in the comments below!

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One Response to Flickr Photostream: A Contemporary Life Narrative?

  1. antoniotena17

    I find this post to have excellent ideas to question about Flickr. I have this friend who often goes around life taking pictures, without sharing them on any kind of social media. She has never really told us why she does this, but I asked myself, what is the point of pictures? I believe pictures each tell an individual story that is aided through images. In terms of autobiographical practice I believe that Flickr could be an autobiographical practice because it allows you to tell stories about yourself, in this case to other people. Furthermore, I think it also aids you tell stories about someone else. So in the end we choose if it is a personal or collective life narrative, but I think it definitely is a autobiographical practice.

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