Subjectification in the Mirror of Digital Photography: On the Imaginative Processing of Addressing Experiences

Abstract

In this article, I examine photographic self-representations of adolescents and young adults in digital social networks. Analyses of these representations reveals how participants, aged 14 to 28 responded to addressing experiences with their photographs and established self-positioning. The photographic self-representations are therefore considered as part of subjectification processes, in which both habitus—understood as embodied practices—and imaginative body images are expressed. I explain how the object of research was theoretically framed and methodologically conceived in order to examine habitual and imaginative orientations in photographic self-representations as part of subjectification processes. The reconstruction of habitus and body imagination, and particularly their interaction, is identified and critically discussed as a central challenge of the study. Based on the results, a theoretical concept can be developed to introduce imagination as a bodily-founded force of subject formation into discourses of subjectification theory. Through this theoretical perspective, common interpretations of photographic self-representations as expressions of a narcissistic and egocentric generation can be countered with a more nuanced reading, taking into account the social conditionality of self-images.