Transient Images: Personal Media in Public Frameworks

In this probing study, Eric Freedman focuses on what images from photography, mobile communications, and the Internet reveal about looking. Exploring subjectivity by critically examining the look, he elaborates on the nature of the photographic frame and its relation to interpretive practices. Freedman scrutinizes what he calls technobiographyOCoa life written through technology, and considers the movement of personal images into public spaces. He also considers authorship that situates the self as inherently engaged with and inscribed by information technology.

All of the chapters ina"Transient Images"aexplore Freedman's interest in examining how media technologies activate particular notions of self and community. He provides examples that address traumaOCopictures of missing children on milk cartons and episodes of the reality series InterventionOCoas well as the strategies behind creating and distributing personal advertisements on the Internet.a"Transient Images"adraws out the tensions that exist in images circulating in the digital era.