Words about Images: Coordinating Community in Amateur Photography

Abstract

This paper describes how the adoption of digital technologies by two amateur photography communities created coordination challenges. Digital technologies disrupted the classification schemes used not just to sort images into groups for competition, but also served to coordinate the community itself. In opening up the classification scheme, members were able to see and reflect on the sources used to establish the definitions that sorted images and organised their practices not just locally but more widely across various boundaries. Without having words about images, both amateur photography communities would have struggled to coordinate.