Imag(in)ing place: Reframing photography practices and affective social media platforms.

GUANGZHOU (China); CHINA

• Digital photography is entangled with people's imaginaries of places. • Social media plays vital roles in the performative practices of photography. • Digital photography practices are reframed by affective social media platforms. • Photography practices can reproduce the affective value of social media platforms. This article outlines the connections between technologies (mobile devices, photo-editing apps, social media, and so on), people, and digital/physical places through the lens of everyday photography practices. It contributes to wider discussions in digital geographies by investigating affective social media's role in the embodied and performative practices of digital photography. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of digital photography in urban Guangzhou (a city in south China), this article argues that digital photography practices and processes are entangled with people's imaginaries of places based on their social and cultural identities, photography skills, aesthetics, geographical knowledge, as well as local cultures reframed by affective social media platforms. Embodied and performative photography practices, in turn, can reproduce the affective value of social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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