Constant Dullaart in Contemporary Photography Special of the Guardian

Constant Dullaart's work 'High Retention, Slow Delivery' is featured in 'What next for photography in the age of Instagram?' an essay that is part of The Guardians Contemporary Photography Special.

"(...) work by the intriguingly named Constant Dullaart, whose 2014 project, High Retention, Slow Delivery, targeted what he called “the contemporary attention economy” of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, the “sharing mechanisms” of which – likes, retweets, followers, friends – stimulate “an appreciation system based on popularity over quality, and social skills over talent”.

Dullaart’s work centres on what he calls “the capitalisation of community”. In all of this, Wiley’s anxiety about the creation of a new photograph “that can stake a claim to originality or affect” remains resonant. But it also sparks an attendant question, which is not so much what social media is doing to photography, but what an image-propelled social media culture is doing to us? Where is our agency in a world so dominated and driven by digital technology, so controlled by global corporations and invisible algorithms?"

 

The full essay can be read here.

Publication date: 20 Oct '18