Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The technology innovations have made the creation, manipulation, sharing, and dissemination of personal photos an everyday experience for many Chinese people. They have also redefined the relationship between people and their photos. This study explores how the three most popular types of digital photography apps in China, namely, the beauty selfie app, the face-filtering app, and the AI face-swapping app, have deterritorialized and reterritorialized the assemblage of producing and using “my photo.” This study adopts Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage, the tetravalent model of assemblage, and Delanda’s development of the assemblage theory as the major theoretical framework and methodology. Specifically, the study defines and analyzes different sizes of assemblages. First, it analyzes the material and expressive components of the assemblage of photo created by the apps. It then examines the emergent properties and capacities in the bigger assemblage of me, the apps, and my photos, and further analyzes how the apps deterritorialize the long-existing perceived relationship between me and my photo. After that, the study critically analyzes the latest noted events related to the apps, i.e., the Your Highness Qiaobiluo event and the ZAO event, to show how the even bigger assemblage of me, my photos, viewers, the apps, and the app developers performs as a source of limitations and opportunities for the individual person, as one of the component parts. The study seeks to develop a new theoretical approach to understanding the role of digital photography apps in our daily life.