Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Based on the measurement tools of digital popularity, the most popular photo of the most popular American President in the social media era, Obama, is a selfie-style photograph of him next to a United States citizen. This is definitely not the kind of regular presidential photography we expect from a President, according to our experience of the famous first-page photos printed in 20th century media. What changes in communication, culture and technology have occurred in the social media era that led to this kind of photographic portrayal? The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical overview of the evolution of portrait in the era of social networking, and define the role of the latter in terms of techniques and style and modes of expression. Simultaneously, to study the evolutionary course of photographic portrait in the social media, mainly Instagram, and to analyze the way in which the form and content of photography has been shaped in the last decade based on the taste of the viewers. The most famous portraits of politicians and other VIPs before and after the advent of social media will be used as case studies; that is, portraits in magazines, and advertising campaigns before 2004, the launch of first major social networks, and portraits in social networks after 2004. Their visual elements will be analyzed on the basis of the theory of image multimodality by Kress and Leeuwen. Then, a sociocultural analysis will be developed, as an explanation to the differences revealed.