Recent scholarship on media witnessing, where street protest provides a clear example, has noted how images attain agency, ‘exceeding their frames’ as they call for an active response (Taylor 2003). This chapter addresses this phenomenon in a study of selected political protests, comparing their visual representations on screen in news coverage by four global television channels and in international award-winning press photographs. Is it possible to identify visual icons in this coverage, images that can be expected to shape how these events are remembered and that may reappear in future protests? Or has the photographic icon, as some scholars have suggested (Goldberg 1991), become a thing of the past?

The photo essay, a form of visual journalism that arose during the era of the picture magazines, has reemerged as a regular feature of global news channels, including CNN, BBC World, and, notably, Al Jazeera English, recognized for its live reporting of political unrest.  In 2017, a year marked by protest around the world, AJE published over 200 photo-series, including 37 on public protest. An analysis based in a four-year study of protest on screen, revealed that these photo essays share characteristics that in turn distinguish them from video broadcasts of public protests. The photo-reportage on screen, like its classic forerunner in print, employs a variety of visual perspectives and focuses on participants who are often quoted and identified by name. Scenes of public protest are complemented by visual and textual reporting from the private/domestic sphere. This visual strategy, in contrast to the immediacy of video coverage from the streets, supports knowledge of the protest issue and engagement with its participants. 

The photo essay, a form of visual journalism that arose during the era of the picture magazines, has reemerged as a regular feature of global news channels, including CNN, BBC World, and, notably, Al Jazeera English, recognized for its live reporting of political unrest. In 2017, a year marked by protest around the world, AJE published over 200 photo-series, including 37 on public protest. An analysis based on a four-year study of protest on screen revealed that these photo essays share characteristics that in turn distinguish them from video broadcasts of public protests. The photo-reportage on screen, like its classic forerunner in print, employs a variety of visual perspectives and focuses on participants who are often quoted and identified by name. Scenes of public protest are complemented by visual and textual reporting from the private/domestic sphere. This visual strategy, in contrast to the immediacy of video coverage from the streets, supports knowledge of the protest issue and engagement with its participants.

This essay traces the resurrection of the fotoescultura, a three-dimensional photographic portrait popular in rural Mexico in the early 20th century, as interpreted in recent works by Performing Pictures, a contemporary Swedish artist duo. The early fotoesculturas were an augmented form of portraiture, commissioned by family members who supplied photographs that artisans in Mexico City converted into framed sculptural portraits for display on family altars. We compare these ‘traditional’ photographic objects with ‘new’ digital forms of video animation on screen and in public space that characterize Performing Pictures' work, and explore how the fotoescultura inspired new incarnations of their series Men that Fall.  At the intersection between the material aspects of a ‘traditional’ vernacular art form and ‘new’ media art, we identify a photographic aesthetic that shifts from seeing and perceiving to physical engagement, and discuss how the frame and its parergon augment the photographic gaze. The essay is accompanied by photos and video stills from Performing Pictures’ film poem Dreaming the Memories of Now (2018), depicting their work with the fotoesculturas.

Texten följer hur figuren Santa Ana, Marias moder och katolskt skyddshelgon, framställs i olika sammanhang, medier och föreställande former i en by i södra Mexiko som bär helgonets namn. På vilka olika sätt kan Santa Ana - helgonfiguren såväl som platsen - träda fram i mötet mellan två skilda sociokulturella sammanhang där de relitiösa och politiska axlarna korsas? Tolkningarna som Santa Ana-berättelserna ger upphov till skifter mellan olika medietyper och lokaliteter, i vilka olika varianter av religiositet och konstnärligthet flätas ihop. 

The recent emergence of an increasingly participatory media culture has opened up new ways for audiences to collectively negotiate the cultural meanings surrounding celebrities. Public screens are one such phenomenon, where people gather to witness the live broadcast of celebrity events. Taking our point of departure in two recent royal weddings in the UK and Sweden, we explore the performative displays that public viewing affords, as participants interact with the event on screen, with other participants, and with media representatives in the venue. This article provides a fresh analytical perspective on how audiences engage with royal celebrities in such mass-participatory consumption contexts, illuminating a little-studied area of celebrity culture.

This article examines the amateur photographer as a common figure in contemporary news photographs, focusing on how the amateur’s gestures signify in journalism’s coverage of media events. Drawing on theories of photography as performance and ritual, I argue that the presence of the non-professional in the news photograph destabilizes journalistic discourse by challenging the role of the professional photographer and by redefining the event and its meanings. This is especially critical in coverage of catastrophic events, when the amateur’s gestures become a form of witnessing from a participant’s perspective, carrying both private and collective meanings for how the event will be understood in the future, and undermining the authority of journalism.

Visuality is an increasingly contested phenomenon. Rarely stable and never “pure,” the visual is always intertwined with other senses and expressive forms and is often implicated in multiple power relations. Whether as part of social and cultural practices, or as utilized in social scientific inquiry and investigation, the visual exerts a power that continues to challenge and be challenged by other ways of knowing. This power is especially apparent when we consider visuality in its digital manifestations: as visually based media expand their purview across social, cultural, and geographic space we find they are often in “friction” with established norms, structures, and modes of expression.

In this themed issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, the authors have been invited to explore these issues, under the rubric of “Visual Frictions.”

Visuality is an increasingly contested phenomenon. Rarely stable and never “pure,” the visual is always intertwined with other senses and expressive forms and is often implicated in multiple power relations. Whether as part of social and cultural practices, or as utilized in social scientific inquiry and investigation, the visual exerts a power that continues to challenge and be challenged by other ways of knowing. This power is especially apparent when we consider visuality in its digital manifestations: as visually based media expand their purview across social, cultural, and geographic space we find they are often in “friction” with established norms, structures, and modes of expression. In this themed issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, the authors have been invited to explore these issues, under the rubric of “Visual Frictions.”