Photography

The everyday practice of photography by millions of amateurphotographers - the family snapshots, the holiday prints, thewedding portraits - may seem to be a spontaneous and highlypersonal activity. But Bourdieu and his associates show that fewcultural activities are more structured and systematic than thesocial uses of this ordinary art. This perceptive and wide-ranging analysis of the practice ofphotography brings out the logic implicit in this cultural field.The norms which define the occasions and the objects of photographyserve to display the socially differentiated functions of, andattitudes towards, the photographic image and act. For some socialgroups, photography is primarily a means of preserving the presentand reproducing the euphoric moments of collective celebration,whereas for other groups it is the occasion of an aestheticjudgement, in which photos are endowed with the dignity of works ofart.