While for many cur­rent con­stel­la­tions of hard­wares, soft­wares, and, ana­logue objects (poly­medi­a­tions, Her­rmann and Tyma 2015) rep­re­sent a shift brought about by the con­text of COVID-19 and remote work/socializing, a com­plex land­scape of new medi­a­tions has been present in the every­day of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies for years now (Madi­anou and Miller 2012). This paper uses a con­cep­tu­al frame­work focused on the con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of pho­to­graph­ic exchanges with­in “socio-tech­ni­cal” pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices (Lehmuskallio and Gómez Cruz 2016) and poten­tial emo­tive char­ac­ter of pho­to­graph­ic exchanges to ana­lyze (dig­i­tal) pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices in eleven Irish-Span­ish fam­i­lies for eigh­teen months. The research design was par­tic­u­lar­ly informed by nar­ra­tive inquiry and visu­al soci­ol­o­gy (Bach 2007; Bell 2013; Squire 2015), and three research meth­ods were orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped for this research—three phased con­sent process, visu­al­iza­tion of cir­cle of ref­er­ence, and the home tour of pho­to­graph­ic dis­plays. All par­tic­i­pants par­tic­i­pat­ed in four stages: a nar­ra­tive inter­view with a pho­to-elic­i­ta­tion ele­ment; a sec­ond nar­ra­tive inter­view fol­lowed by a visu­al explo­ration of their pho­to­graph­ic dis­plays at their homes; semi-struc­tured inter­view about their pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices; and in three fol­low-up inter­views. For read­ers inter­est­ed in the method­olog­i­cal approach and research design, allow me to refer you to a pre­vi­ous piece of mine (Pri­eto-Blan­co, 2016a). The aim of this paper is to argue that pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices of Span­ish-Irish fam­i­lies com­ple­ment ana­logue “third places” (Old­en­burg 1989, 23) by sub­si­diz­ing social inter­ac­tions and advanc­ing (infor­mal) social­iza­tion. It will be argued that suc­cess depends on the “rela­tion­al affor­dances” (Kono 2009) of the technology/medium employed, and that con­crete affor­dances (pub­lish­ing, index­i­cal­i­ty) are acti­vat­ed to sup­port strate­gies of inclu­sion and exclu­sion (bound­ary work). The next sec­tion pro­vides the the­o­ret­i­cal con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of the argu­ment, before find­ings are pre­sent­ed and sub­se­quent­ly discussed.

Literature Review

Although the schol­ar­ly use of affor­dances has been incon­sis­tent (Wright and Par­choma 2011, 249-250), it is a term that allows the explo­ration of inter­ac­tions between humans and non-humans—i.e. Bruno Latour’s hybrid actor (1999, 181), or Ian Russell’s “Hume­dia” (2007). Affor­dances are always framed by sys­tems, which include arti­facts, actions, and social con­texts. Tet­suya Kono pro­vides a more com­pre­hen­sive and prag­mat­ic def­i­n­i­tion of the term: “Affor­dances are the dis­po­si­tions of the envi­ron­ment; an indi­vid­ual can inte­grate some of them into his or her action” (369). Thus, affor­dances are nec­es­sary con­di­tions for action pro­duced and main­tained by con­ven­tions, and when per­ceived ren­der inten­tion­al respons­es pos­si­ble (Kono 361, 369). Images need media to become vis­i­ble, our bod­ies being one of those (Belt­ing 2001). They are “trans­mit­ted in the inter­play between media car­ry­ing images and bod­ies direct­ing their atten­tion in per­ceiv­ing them” (Lehmuskallio 2012, 40). Often the images car­ried by media are of our bod­ies, which Mikko Vil­li describes as “medi­at­ed pres­ence” (2015). Some­times, the medi­a­tion of pres­ence allows for tele-cocoons to emerge, “[…] a zone of inti­ma­cy in which peo­ple can con­tin­u­ous­ly main­tain their rela­tion­ships with oth­ers who they have already encoun­tered with­out being restrict­ed by geog­ra­phy and time” (Habuchi 2005,167), such as I will argue below, kin­ship mak­ing. Obvi­ous­ly, not any place is a tele-cocoon, but could any place become one? How would this happen?

By look­ing at the affor­dances acti­vat­ed through con­crete prac­tices, I believe we can start out­lin­ing pat­terns of inter­ac­tion between peo­ple and images/objects. For instance, my research with Irish-Span­ish fam­i­lies revealed that social process­es such as social­iza­tion of young chil­dren (read below), go on through pho­to­graph­ic exchanges and relat­ed visu­al prac­tices. Their visu­al prac­tices were organ­ised in social set­tings around shared under­stand­ings and objects. Antoine Hen­nion argues there is a process of attachment—affective attach­ment, one may say—that reveals rela­tions between peo­ple and things as well as between peo­ple, and that does not need to be ben­e­fi­cial, as attach­ment could sig­ni­fy “a bind, restric­tion, restraint, and depen­dence” (2012, 4). The way we relate to each other—or using Hennion’s vocab­u­lary, attach to each other—is emplaced and expe­ri­en­tial, and “con­cerns shared his­to­ry, com­mon prop­er­ty and shared objects” (Jamieson 1998, 200). It is exact­ly this impor­tant con­nec­tion of emplace­ment between human and non­hu­man actors that is high­light­ed here with the aim to explore in depth the social life of (dig­i­tal) pho­tographs, thus advo­cat­ing for an approach to media that accounts for the social rela­tions exist­ing in and through mate­r­i­al worlds (Edwards 2002, 2009, 2012), as well as for their “ever more com­plex orga­ni­za­tion­al pat­terns” (Couldry and Hepp 2016, 35-36).

Work­ing with Span­ish-Irish fam­i­lies was fun­da­men­tal to explore social process­es that go through media, because their spe­cif­ic geo­graph­i­cal set­tings meant that fam­i­ly mem­bers lived in dif­fer­ent coun­tries and inter­act­ed phys­i­cal­ly face-to-face at best a hand­ful of times a year. They turned to dig­i­tal media to medi­ate social inter­ac­tions, there­by sus­tain­ing affec­tive rela­tion­ships and extend­ing their home beyond their house (Rose 2003, 9-15). In spite of their seem­ing­ly tran­sient and ephemer­al char­ac­ter (Mur­ray 2008; Grainge 2011), dig­i­tal media offer the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fre­quent and con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion, co-pres­ence (Vil­li 2015) and tele-cocoon­ing (Habuchi 2005). This sug­gests some degree of per­for­ma­tive force¹ (Austin 1961, 119, 287). Pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices com­prise three stages: par­tic­i­pa­tion, rep­e­ti­tion, and emplace­ment, which fos­ter and sus­tain emo­tion­al inter­ac­tions among mem­bers of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies, and are sup­port­ed by flex­i­ble poly­medi­a­tions and some con­crete affor­dances (pub­lish­ing, index­i­cal­i­ty). At the same time, as research par­tic­i­pants explain below, their fam­i­lies often include cho­sen fam­i­ly mem­bers who live in near geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty. In form­ing “fam­i­lies of choice” (West­on 1997) that sup­port their emplace­ment and sense of belong­ing, transna­tion­al fam­i­lies con­tribute to the con­tem­po­rary elas­tic­i­ty of fam­i­ly, and of friend­ship (Wat­ters 2009; King-O’Riain 2015). Fam­i­ly and fam­i­ly mak­ing no longer depend on rules, but on feel­ings of affec­tion (Beck-Gernsheim 1998; Jamieson 1998; Gabb 2008), which may explain why even peo­ple “nor­mal­ly liv­ing alone” are exten­sive­ly involved in fam­i­ly rela­tions (Inglis 2015, 75). Con­tem­po­rary family—whether transna­tion­al or not—seems to respond to an ongo­ing process of nego­ti­a­tion ongo­ing as a com­mit­ment and nego­ti­a­tion as a vari­a­tion in respond­ing to indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive sit­u­a­tions of prox­im­i­ty, dis­tance, and propin­quity, many of which are medi­at­ed. Could pho­tog­ra­phy be thought as a tool of kin­ship making?

Con­stel­la­tions of hard­wares, soft­wares, and ana­logue objects (poly­medi­a­tions) offered these Irish-Span­ish fam­i­lies oppor­tu­ni­ties to nego­ti­ate feel­ings of famil­ial affec­tion, by cre­at­ing places that fam­i­ly mem­bers inhab­it, even if only momen­tar­i­ly. I sug­gest that mutu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion is present in pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies, and that pho­tographs are employed as social objects (Engeström 2005) cir­cu­lat­ing with­in existing/developing larg­er every­day media prac­tices. Pho­tographs are used to do inti­mate bound­ary work. How could this medi­at­ed bound­ary work be best observed? This paper argues that ethnog­ra­phy and nar­ra­tive inquiry allow for the affec­tive expe­ri­ence of medi­at­ed attach­ments to be observed/explored. Through empha­sis on field­work sto­ries, this paper argues that, in transna­tion­al fam­i­lies, pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices are process­es of attach­ment, where­by affect is artic­u­lat­ed. But, as one might say, the proof is in the pudding.

Findings

Photographs that travel

Celia, a Span­ish migrant liv­ing in Ire­land and moth­er of two, explains that when an image appears in her What­sApp, she knows that some­body has inten­tion­al­ly sent it, and the image still retains “the mag­i­cal mean­ing” and the sense of per­ma­nence that she attrib­ut­es to ana­logue pho­tographs. Celia’s phone was on the kitchen table while we talked about the pho­tographs she had recent­ly shared. She took it and start­ed show­ing me some. She was explain­ing how she only takes pho­tographs with her cam­era phone and how these are a way of trans­form­ing geo­graph­i­cal dis­tance into emo­tion­al close­ness, for exam­ple between her chil­dren and her cousin, who lived in Ire­land with them for over nine months. Ever since, they have kept in touch reg­u­lar­ly, main­ly through phone messaging.

Celia: “It’s been four years since. Four years of rela­tion­ship real­ly. […] I send her loads of pho­tos, most­ly of the kids so that they have a rela­tion­ship. I like to keep her post­ed on our day-to-day lives. For exam­ple, I have also sent her pho­tos of the recent snow­fall”².

In Pedro’s case, geolo­cat­ed and syn­chonized pho­tographs allowed his fam­i­ly mem­bers abroad to “have a walk around the house.” Gala’s sto­ry of her daughter’s prom night includes a pho­to­graph trav­el­ling by phone from Ire­land to Spain, and by foot in Spain from Gala’s cousin’s phone to Gala’s mother’s liv­ing room. As these insights reveal, send­ing pho­tographs to rel­a­tives who live far away is a com­mon prac­tice for transna­tion­al fam­i­lies. More­over, they sug­gest that net­worked pho­tographs not only medi­ate phys­i­cal pres­ence by giv­ing the illu­sion of being there, but also medi­ate social pres­ence by giv­ing the illu­sion of being togeth­er. A con­nec­tion is estab­lished over dis­tance that allows for dig­i­tal third places to emerge. The ques­tion of gen­er­at­ing a com­mon place, of emplace­ment of their pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices, aris­es again. And my sug­ges­tion is that: a) pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies respond to con­nec­tiv­i­ty, reflex­iv­i­ty, and mate­r­i­al emplace­ment; and b) it is through synaes­thet­ic, dis­cur­sive, and prag­mat­ic qual­i­ties that transna­tion­al fam­i­lies make their inten­tion­al choic­es among the myr­i­ad of medi­a­tion choic­es at their disposal.

Let’s look at the pho­to­graph of prom night in more detail. Gala made use of the affor­dances of propin­quity and pub­lish­ing to share the image of her daughter’s prom imme­di­ate­ly, and only to whom she want­ed to. In this case cam­era phone pho­tog­ra­phy didn’t fix the unex­pect­ed or spon­ta­neous, nor did it enhance phone com­mu­ni­ca­tion per se (Riv­ière 2005, 177-178). Instead, it pro­vid­ed a con­nec­tion and a sense of belong­ing to those involved in the visu­al prac­tice (pro­duc­ing, shar­ing, stor­ing, view­ing). The plat­form used to share the pho­to­graph, What­sApp, allowed Gala to imple­ment con­trol strate­gies regard­ing inclusion/exclusion. Here and in fur­ther exam­ples below, it becomes clear that Irish-Span­ish fam­i­lies per­ceived What­sApp as a tool that allows for social co-pres­ence to be gen­er­at­ed and man­aged for a par­tic­u­lar group. I believe that the clear para­me­ters of pub­lish­ing present in What­sApp par­tial­ly explain its pop­u­lar­i­ty regard­ing the shar­ing of more inti­mate images.

[Talk­ing about ways in which she shares images]

Celia - [talk­ing about her arti­fi­cial sister-in-law (cuña­da pos­ti­za)]: “With her for exam­ple, the way to keep in touch, although I don’t know if you are inter­est­ed in it, we have made a blog about cook­ing so then we take cook­ing photos.”

Patri­cia: “Ah, well that is ok.”

Celia: “It is a way of main­tain­ing the relationship.”

Patri­cia: “I will ask you for the address of the blog.”

Celia: “Ok, well so far we only have a cou­ple of things. She has pub­lished some and she has added her sis­ter and her sis­ter--in-law also. For exam­ple my arti­fi­cial sis­ter-in-law has uploaded pho­tos of her daugh­ter. The oth­er day my cousin, I mean the father, who is my real cousin, and my god­daugh­ter, well we all shack up togeth­er but […] They two made a pota­to tor­tilla togeth­er, although as far as I know my cousin is not into cook­ing, but well, the two of them made it. And there are pho­tos of her [Celia’s god­daugh­ter] adding the eggs and mix­ing them and so on. But, well, what would have been amaz­ing is a pho­to­graph of my cousin because he was wear­ing a glo­ri­ous apron, one of those that make you look like a Greek statue.”

Celia knew about the apron because, par­al­lel to the pro­duc­tion of con­tent for the blog, there was an exchange of snap­shots in What­sApp between her and her arti­fi­cial sister-in-law.

The choice of medium/technology, i.e. the con­fig­u­ra­tion of the poly­medi­a­tion, whether it involves cam­era phones, video con­fer­enc­ing or social media (or sev­er­al at the same time, as we are start­ing to observe with regard to home­work and COVID-19), seems to respond as well to bound­ary work, to fre­quen­cy, and rel­e­vance. Belonging/membership(s) is man­aged through both vari­ables. Mes­sages are gen­er­at­ed and shared as often as required by the group, inas­much as they are rel­e­vant to the group. And as they do so, they bring about a sense of con­ti­nu­ity to the rela­tion­ships they medi­ate. The dia­logues in which dig­i­tal pho­tographs are often embed­ded have no fore­see­able end, despite being con­tin­u­ous­ly inter­rupt­ed. Pedro: “My sis­ter is more prone to send pho­tos. But that is not the norm. The norm is that it [the pho­to] leads to a con­ver­sa­tion: ‘Hel­lo, how are you doing?’ And then you talk about oth­er things.”

In fact, con­ti­nu­ity (which can be inter­pret­ed as the com­mit­ment of keep­ing in touch) is a key ele­ment of pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies. The shar­ing of pho­tographs gen­er­ates a tem­po­rary and par­tial oblit­er­a­tion of phys­i­cal dis­tance. It also cre­ates a space of shar­ing inti­mate­ly, a tele-cocoon. Like oth­er places of infor­mal social­iza­tion, tele-cocoons seem to also respond to belong­ing, con­ge­nial­i­ty, spon­tane­ity (Old­en­burg 1989) as well as to con­ven­tions, norms, and rep­e­ti­tions. In short, we may want to con­sid­er tele-cocoons as medi­at­ed third places, and explore how dig­i­tal pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices seem to ensure that the social­iza­tion process will go on. It will be for­ev­er resumed. Thus, the shar­ing becomes as impor­tant as what is being pic­tured (Lob­inger and Schreiber 2017). In oth­er words, image con­tent is con­tex­tu­al­ized through socio-mate­r­i­al and affec­tive processes.

[Talk­ing about the ways in which they share images impacts on the images they share]

Maria: “It depends, if they [their chil­dren] are au naturel or in their pyjamas…”

Pedro: “That is true, if the chil­dren are naked for exam­ple I do not like to send pho­tos of the chil­dren naked via Inter­net. From the waist up that is ok. I mean, if they are in the bath­tub and you can’t see it, ok. And I am care­ful that they are not exposed. But it gives me the creeps, you know. And then those pho­tos in which… So it is somebody’s name day and you go to sing to their bed and every­body is in their pyja­mas and they have bad hair and so on, well I might send those pho­tographs to par­ents and sib­lings and that is it.”

Maria: “And to one very good friend. Yes, some­body who knows me but not the neighbor.”

[Talk­ing about the pho­to­graph she took on her daughter’s prom night]

Gala: “Well, yes. Not the ones I took, but the ones that thou­sands of peo­ple who were there took, yes. Those are on Face­book from that night. But not mine. […] I believe I showed this one to some­body from Dario’s fam­i­ly or… no… no it was to my neigh­bours. My neigh­bours, yes, I showed it to them.”

[Talk­ing about the ways in which she shares images]

Yessi­ca: “Not by email. Nor­mal email, no. I would say that among us, well maybe a lit­tle less with my broth­er who lives here [Ire­land], but 99% [of the time] what works real­ly well is Face­book. Also there is my brother’s daugh­ter who is a teenag­er now and she has Face­book. […] but it is get­ting out of her hands because she already has three hun­dred and fifty friends and he told her ‘you need to do a selec­tion of peo­ple who are real­ly your friends and the ones who are not.’”

The field­work sto­ries sug­gest that pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies revolve around shar­ing, co-pres­ence, and belong­ing. They pro­duce, share, and store pho­tographs in a myr­i­ad of ways, using net­worked tech­nolo­gies and iso­lat­ed ones (as we shall see below). In the midst of choice and dif­fer­ence, there seems to be a con­stant: pho­tographs are treat­ed as active tes­ti­monies of every­day life, i.e. as index­i­cal signs. The affor­dance of index­i­cal­i­ty, which “[…] is only real­ized and sig­nif­i­cant as it is acti­vat­ed, as it were, by par­tic­u­lar prac­tices (Rose 2010, 29), seems to be acti­vat­ed through­out. The same applies to the affor­dance of pub­lish­ing. When the affor­dance of index­i­cal­i­ty is acti­vat­ed, there is a need to con­trol the poten­tial effects of shar­ing: reach­ing unin­tend­ed audi­ences, stress, and dis­com­fort. Because while the index­i­cal nature of emo­tion­al traces of pho­tographs sure­ly shapes the shar­ing process, the affor­dance of pub­lish­ing ulti­mate­ly deter­mines who is in con­trol, and there­fore how pho­tographs are shared. As Yessi­ca puts it: “It is a mat­ter of not los­ing con­trol over the dis­tri­b­u­tion of my pho­tographs.” Pub­lish­ing in social media dif­fers from plat­form to plat­form, but par­tic­i­pants expressed very sim­i­lar views when it came to their per­cep­tion of it and the strate­gies of con­trol they had in turn devel­oped. Hence, again, plat­forms such as What­sApp, which allow for great con­trol regard­ing pub­lish­ing, were pre­ferred by transna­tion­al fam­i­lies. Index­i­cal­i­ty and pub­lish­ing seem to be acti­vat­ed through­out, even when the pho­tographs are not digital/digitally mediated.

Yessi­ca: “And why in the liv­ing room? Because we spend 80% of the time in the liv­ing room […] We play here. Well, I am also a woman, I am a bit … I mean I also like that when peo­ple come for a vis­it … I don’t know, but not hav­ing pho­tos on a wall is like there is no life in the house. I don’t know, but that is how I see it.

Patri­cia: “Where else do you have photographs?”

Yessi­ca: “In the cor­ri­dor. Yes, here for exam­ple I have the pho­tographs of my sister-in-law’s wed­ding. Up there we have the fam­i­ly, well the sib­lings anyway.”

Patri­cia: “These pho­tographs are more formal.”

Yessi­ca: “Yes, that is it. These ones are here because they hired a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er for the wed­ding, and the pho­tographs came out real­ly beau­ti­ful and great to be enlarged. So I chose the ones that suit­ed me best, which were the fam­i­ly, my son with the tele­phone because it is very cute, and myself with my son because my daugh­ter wasn’t here yet […] and then over there was anoth­er of the whole fam­i­ly, but I am not sure how but when using the stairs it broke […] so I replaced it with one of us four.”

Patri­cia: “Of the fam­i­ly now”

Yessi­ca: “MY, MY fam­i­ly now. On St. Patrick’s Day.”

Ana­logue pho­tographs are per­ceived as a con­stant pres­ence in the fam­i­ly. Their mate­ri­al­i­ty not only offers dura­bil­i­ty but also sta­bil­i­ty, a cru­cial fac­tor when it comes to social­iza­tion. One could argue that paper-based pho­tographs trans­mit a sense of onto­log­i­cal secu­ri­ty, because as ana­logue objects, they exist in the world and hold a degree of per­ma­nence. Pedro com­ment­ed, “So to speak, peo­ple look at dig­i­tal pho­tos for five min­utes, and they like them, but that is it, then they save them onto their hard dri­ves, and they do not open the pho­tos any more. But then when you go back, my par­ents have some on the fridge. So I think it is worth [to print them] and so we give it more impor­tance.” It is no coin­ci­dence that Pedro men­tions the refrig­er­a­tor here. Using the refrig­er­a­tor as a dis­play allows for spa­tial­ly dis­tant fam­i­ly mem­bers to be incor­po­rat­ed into the every­day life of the house­hold. Refrig­er­a­tors become “a kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tions cen­tre […] where one can place infor­ma­tion in the con­fi­dent knowl­edge that one’s fel­low house­hold mem­bers can then have no excuse for say­ing that they did not see it” (Mor­ley 2007, 263). In hous­es where the refrig­er­a­tor is pan­elled, an alter­na­tive dis­play was avail­able, and placed around the kitchen/eating area. Celia had a notice board next to the refrig­er­a­tor; Pedro and Maria cre­at­ed a fam­i­ly col­lage. Like refrig­er­a­tors, these dis­plays are con­stant com­pan­ions of transna­tion­al fam­i­ly life.

Medi­at­ed inter­ac­tions are fun­da­men­tal for transna­tion­al fam­i­lies if only because face-to-face encoun­ters are very lim­it­ed. The rou­tines linked to cook­ing and meal shar­ing explains why fam­i­ly pho­tographs coex­ist next to spaces for the chores of every­day life. Accord­ing to recent soci­o­log­i­cal work on kin­ship (West­on 1997; Beck-Gern­sheim 1988; Gabb 2008; Inglis 2015; King-O’Riain, 2015), a proac­tive atti­tude is fun­da­men­tal in order to cre­ate, reaf­firm, and sus­tain fam­i­ly ties. Dig­i­tal pho­tographs seem to func­tion as prompts for fur­ther inter­ac­tion, while pho­to-objects may be seen as aide-de-mem­oires that con­tribute to lev­el­ling out the irreg­u­lar pat­tern of interaction/participation of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies. The com­bi­na­tion of every­day life, domes­tic­i­ty, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion make refrig­er­a­tors very dynam­ic sites of exhi­bi­tion. The effi­cien­cy asso­ci­at­ed with invoic­es and errands inter­sects with process­es of fam­i­ly-mak­ing. The act of keep­ing in touch responds to the affec­tive and the chore-like.

Some­times these ana­logue ver­sions are used to con­tain mis­for­tune, a prac­tice that is far from new, but in fact strong­ly resem­bles the Vic­to­ri­an tra­di­tion of using the par­lour to dis­play images of the deceased, often dec­o­rat­ed with dried flow­ers, hair, and tex­tiles. The emo­tion­al chal­lenge that per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary absences pose is par­tial­ly mit­i­gat­ed through these images. In the case of Yessi­ca, she placed the last pho­to­graph of her father on her refrig­er­a­tor (the image shows him hug­ging her son and anoth­er of his grand­chil­dren). The acti­vat­ed affor­dance of index­i­cal­i­ty allows Yessi­ca, her part­ner, and her chil­dren, to treat the pho­to­graph as if it was alive (Lehmuskallio 2012). The index­i­cal­i­ty accounts for its authen­tic­i­ty and tes­ti­mo­ni­al role; the punc­tum pierces twice: dis­tance and absence (Vil­li 2014). In this par­tic­u­lar case, it is almost as if the real affor­dance of the refrig­er­a­tor, pre­serv­ing food, had been trans­plant­ed into the pho­to­graph (trans­formed into a per­ceived affor­dance of affect, per­haps?). In Gala’s house there were also ana­logue pho­tographs of deceased fam­i­ly mem­bers. They were locat­ed on top of a chest of draw­ers, which is placed between the eat­ing and the liv­ing area. In transna­tion­al fam­i­lies, print­ed pho­tographs respond to con­texts of ana­logue pho­tog­ra­phy, such as fram­ing and exhibit­ing on walls, man­tel­pieces, or albums. The ubiq­ui­tous but frag­ile co-pres­ence that dig­i­tal means such as video calls and phone mes­sag­ing offer, is com­ple­ment­ed by paper-based pho­tographs, in which time has frozen. Pho­tographs on refrig­er­a­tors are an expres­sion there­of, but there are others.

Pedro and Maria do in fact do more than that. On the door of their liv­ing room, they have a large col­lage dis­play­ing all fam­i­ly mem­bers in Slo­va­kia and Spain. Pho­to frames are present in every room of the house except for the bath­rooms. They send ana­logue pho­to Christ­mas cards to rel­a­tives and friends every year. And Pedro’s moth­er cre­ates her own “poster” to cel­e­brate every birth­day and name day of a mem­ber of the fam­i­ly, which she prints, lam­i­nates, and sends. The one below had arrived a few days before one of our encoun­ters to mark Pedro’s and Maria’s daughter’s birthday.

Dig­i­tal and ana­logue pho­tog­ra­phy and pho­tographs coex­ist in the every­day of Irish-Span­ish fam­i­lies, and both seem to respond to dif­fer­ent social process­es. Dig­i­tal prac­tices respond to every­day desires and pres­sures of shar­ing cer­tain instants, medi­at­ing expe­ri­ences, and bring­ing worlds togeth­er; while ana­logue prac­tices seem to respond to ques­tions of dura­bil­i­ty and remembrance/memory. It is almost as if the ana­logue trans­mits a sense of onto­log­i­cal secu­ri­ty because ana­logue objects exist in the world only as they are, and hold a degree of per­ma­nence. The dig­i­tal seems to trans­mit a sense of togetherness/belonging, but one that responds to rel­e­vance, and thus needs to be end­less­ly renewed/re-expe­ri­enced/re­sumed.

Discussion

Phatic Photography

The pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices of Irish-Span­ish were impact­ed by a myr­i­ad of tech­no­log­i­cal and and socio­cul­tur­al fac­tors. In addi­tion, avail­abil­i­ty and use of new media are also impact­ed by media lit­er­a­cy migra­tion and buy­ing pow­er (Madi­anou and Miller 2012; Pon­zane­si and Leurs 2014). In the field, the cost of cam­eras, cam­era phones, lap­tops, and prints was men­tioned as a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor to the prac­tice. For exam­ple, for Yessi­ca and her hus­band, the pur­chase of a dig­i­tal cam­era (as a lux­u­ry item), could be jus­ti­fied only by a big event, in this case, their first preg­nan­cy. Pedro and Maria invest on prints and oth­er tech­nolo­gies of dis­play (dig­i­tal frames for instance) and inter­ac­tion (a smart­phone) so that their par­ents can see their grand­chil­dren. A few months into the field­work, Celia men­tioned she was work­ing on an ana­logue album for her god­daugh­ter (Celia did some ana­logue black and white pho­tog­ra­phy before hav­ing chil­dren), and that it was going slow­ly because it was both dif­fi­cult and expen­sive to craft. Towards the end of the field­work, Yessica’s moth­er was hand­ed down a lap­top so that she could be more present in the Irish lives of both Yessi­ca and her brother.

The poly­medi­a­tions employed by transna­tion­al fam­i­lies work as aff­fec­tive cur­ren­cy (Ahmed 2004, 118-120). Emo­tions are attached to the con­stant­ly resumed com­mu­nica­tive exchanges with­in the fam­i­ly, which often involves pho­tographs. Many of the sto­ries of medi­a­tion of Span­ish-Irish fam­i­ly life were described as alter­na­tives to spend­ing time togeth­er in per­son. Celia talked about their cook­ing blog in these terms; so did Dario about a blog he had going with his dad; Pedro and Maria talked about grand­par­ents read­ing good­night sto­ries to their grand­chil­dren over Skype; Yessi­ca explained how she would “go out for cof­fee” with her mum over Skype, and how every now and then she would look at pho­to albums and prints with her own chil­dren, some­thing that Gala, her hus­band, and their two daugh­ters also did. The medi­a­tion of kin keep­ing involves ana­logue and dig­i­tal out­puts. It is a com­plex prac­tice in which dif­fer­ent affor­dances are acti­vat­ed to sup­port the devel­op­ment of social ties based both on nor­ma­tive and elec­tive frameworks.

As we con­tin­ue to see, pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies are essen­tial­ly a series of repeat­able and cus­tom­ary acts, where­by affect is medi­at­ed and tele-cocoons emerge, allow­ing for inti­mate inter­ac­tions to take place in them and through them. Celia, Gala, Pedro, and oth­er par­tic­i­pants con­sid­er pho­tographs as exten­sions of expe­ri­ences shared with oth­ers, and as such, they are not just click­bait: they are con­sti­tu­tive and the result of ongo­ing rela­tion­ships. When present in the rou­tines of every­day life (whether on the door of the refrig­er­a­tor or as a back­ground image on the screen of a cam­era phone), pho­tographs enable par­tic­i­pa­tion in place-relat­ed affairs (Agnew 2011, 23-24), acti­vate social sol­i­dar­i­ty, and con­tribute to cre­ate a sense of belong­ing. In this con­text, pho­tog­ra­phy is being in trans­for­ma­tion. It cre­ates a mode of action where­by actors visu­al­ly share tac­it and inter­sub­jec­tive knowl­edge. As social objects (Engeström 2005) and objects of affect (Edwards 2012), shared pho­tographs allow transna­tion­al fam­i­lies to engage affec­tive­ly. They expand pos­si­bil­i­ties for inter­ac­tion over spa­tial dis­tances. Dis­tinct tac­it knowl­edge is devel­oped around shared pho­tographs, which both imbues them with agency and per­for­ma­tive force. Pho­to­graph­ic exchanges are much more than the casu­al swap­ping of snap­shots. These back and forth inter­ac­tions, seem­ing­ly impromp­tu and casu­al, respond to an appeal for emo­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion and, arguably, func­tion at a phat­ic level.

The phat­ic is the com­mu­nica­tive fac­tor that reg­u­lates rela­tion­ships of prox­im­i­ty and social con­tact (Mali­nows­ki 1923). Process­es of inclu­sion and exclu­sion in a group are in the first instance phat­i­cal­ly man­aged through inter­ac­tions that are social­ly and mate­ri­al­ly locat­ed. The orig­i­nal­i­ty of phatic­i­ty in the dig­i­tal era resides in its ubiq­ui­ty and imme­di­a­cy, but the phat­ic acts are still emplaced, struc­tured, and con­tex­tu­al­ized by a com­mu­ni­ty. The phat­ic ele­ment of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy allows for an engage­ment with the rec­i­p­ro­cal, inter­sub­jec­tive, and often tac­it knowl­edge and actions that pre­sup­pose, but are also the fab­ric of, con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal pho­to­graph­ic prac­tices. Con­nect­ed­ness and empa­thy are estab­lished phat­i­cal­ly in first instance.

In short, for transna­tion­al fam­i­lies, phat­ic inter­ac­tions acti­vate three dimen­sions of com­mu­ni­ca­tion: social bind­ing, expe­ri­ence shar­ing, and medi­at­ed cohab­i­ta­tion. The engage­ment in these cus­tom­ary, repet­i­tive, and always emo­tive inter­ac­tions results in what I call the “phat­ic com­mu­ni­ty” (Pri­eto-Blan­co 2010). With­in phat­ic com­mu­ni­ties, exchanged pho­tographs func­tion as both ini­tia­tors as well as out­comes of estab­lished phatic­i­ty. The pho­tographs exchanged work as exter­nal­iza­tions of shared expe­ri­ences, and as such, they are enablers of com­mu­ni­ty via both imme­di­ate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as well as antic­i­pat­ed remem­brance. Pho­to­graph­ic exchanges estab­lish and sus­tain kin­ship in spite of dis­tances apart. By the struc­tur­al rep­e­ti­tion inher­ent to these exchanges, social cap­i­tal is cre­at­ed (Pri­eto-Blan­co 2017). Chil­dren are social­ized in larg­er fam­i­ly units, and pho­tographs become intrin­sic ele­ments of net­works of social sup­port. As per­for­ma­tives, shared pho­tographs are felic­i­tous only for the phat­ic com­mu­ni­ty.³ Senders and receivers become bond­ed in phat­ic inter­ac­tions (Lob­inger 2016; Jänkälä, Lehmuskallio, and Takala 2019; Ehrlén and Vil­li 2020) that take place in phat­ic zones, where cul­tur­al expec­ta­tions have the poten­tial to become mal­leable, flex­i­ble, and expand­ed. There­by, expe­ri­en­tial con­texts are rein­forced, inter­sub­jec­tive knowl­edge is devel­oped, and implict knowl­edge sur­faces along with the acknowl­edg­ment of fail­ure to com­pre­hend the cul­tur­al oth­er (Loen­hoff 2011). This moment can pro­duc­tive­ly lead to a fur­ther explo­ration and gen­er­a­tion of empa­thy towards cul­tur­al and social difference.

As Roswhita Breck­n­er dis­cuss­es, pho­tographs are cre­at­ed with the inten­tion of sur­pass­ing real­i­ty by adding some­thing new to it. The process of visu­al­iz­ing moments, as well as look­ing at the result­ing images, brings about a unique and strik­ing phe­nom­e­non (Erschei­n­ung) as well as poten­tial for change (Breck­n­er 2014, 128). The Span­ish-Irish fam­i­lies who col­lab­o­rat­ed with me cer­tain­ly shared pho­tographs in phat­ic zones, and these images pre­cip­i­tat­ed process­es of inclu­sion and exclu­sion as well as rede­fined the abil­i­ty to act upon social real­i­ties. The near future will tell to what extent dig­i­tal pho­tographs con­tin­ue to sus­tain and devel­op (dis)affect over time and space, par­tic­u­lar­ly if their dis­tri­b­u­tion as auto­mat­ed actions fur­ther evolves.

Fur­ther­more, the con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of phat­ic pho­tog­ra­phy pre­sent­ed here has impli­ca­tions for the wider research and dis­cus­sion of phatic­i­ty. The analy­sis of data and the the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work pro­posed here can be fur­ther expand­ed by schol­ars inter­ro­gat­ing inter­per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the dif­fer­ent func­tions of lan­guage. This inves­ti­ga­tion has unveiled the pro­duc­tive val­ue of the phat­ic dimen­sion of every­day, inti­mate visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, demon­strat­ing that it is fun­da­men­tal in process­es of social­iza­tion of transna­tion­al fam­i­lies. Min­i­mal com­mu­nica­tive acts through which pres­ence is reaf­firmed are acts of emo­tion, vary­ing in degree of depth but strength­ened by per­pe­tu­ity. The (dis)affective nature of phatic­i­ty leads to the cre­ation and cor­rob­o­ra­tion of cir­cles of ref­er­ence and to the estab­lish­ment of inti­mate modes of inter­ac­tion. Even the barest form of phat­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion encap­su­lates tac­it and inter­sub­jec­tive knowl­edge, being thus an instance full of con­tex­tu­al­ized mean­ing. This line of research was timid­ly point­ed out by Bro­nis­law Mali­nows­ki (1923) and only sig­nif­i­cant­ly devel­oped by oth­er schol­ars (La Barre 1954; Ruesch 1972) since then. The present inves­ti­ga­tion sig­nals the poten­tial of the phat­ic to fur­ther under­stand emo­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion and its medi­a­tion, and points to a num­ber of ways to fur­ther expand the work herein.