Abstract

ZELCER, Mariano. Photographing the past: the moving photo device. Inmediac. Comun [online]. 2024, vol.19, n.2, e205.  Epub Dec 01, 2024. ISSN 1510-5091.  https://doi.org/10.18861/ic.2024.19.2.3737.

Recent updates to mobile phone operating systems brought the possibility of generating motion photos using their digital cameras. These photos consist of a very short video that ends in a static image, which corresponds to the instant of the shot. The motion photo can be understood as a new type of image, that combines very precisely two pre-existing substances of expression, and which continues to expand the universe of what is socially called “photography” to encompass, for the first time, images in motion. Using the semiotic notion of device, this article analyzes the genesis of these new photographs, as well as certain innovative practices that are enabled after they are taken. Among them, the article focuses on the possibility, provided by the device, of generating new static photographs of the moments prior to the original capture, which gives rise to the novel practice of taking a photo of a past moment. This particularity of the device, which has the ability to unlink, for the first time, the photographed instant from the one of the shot, has relevant implications as regards enunciation, and can reconfigure, in the near future and with the expansion of the knowledge of this arché, the social understanding of what is called “photography”.

Keywords : photography; digital photography; motion photo; post-photography; device; mobile phone.

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