September’s Eidolon Shelf pick – Nathan Jurgenson: The Social Photo

Eidolon Shelf represents a collaborative effort between Eidolon and one of our favourite places in Budapest: the newly reopened ISBN+ contemporary art bookstore and gallery space. This initiative showcases a monthly selection of books closely aligned with the realms of vernacular photography, banal imaging, and contemporary photographic theories. Our goal is to popularise knowledge in these specific areas through the titles that we enjoyed and have influenced our thinking in the field of everyday imaging. Each month, a featured publication takes center stage on the Eidolon Shelf at the ISBN store, alongside other carefully curated books which are available for purchase on the spot.

**Our recommendation for September is The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson.**

Nathan Jurgenson’s book The Social Photo, published by Verso in 2019, quickly became a widely popular work, offering a concise yet wide-ranging exploration of the evolving field of contemporary media. As a theorist, Jurgenson develops fresh and insightful approaches to understanding the transformations brought about by social media, late-capitalist digital platforms, and the constantly updating devices that have reshaped our world in recent decades.

Photography—or the many new modes to imaging that we now refer to by this name—plays a central role in the questions, including what we consider real (or fake), how we construct our identities, and how we communicate our (both collective or personal) desires. Jurgenson’s main assertion is that we need to take everyday online phenomena, as well as trends, seriously in order to understand what is happening to us socially, culturally, and, last but not least, politically.

Read an excerpt from the book here on Eidolon Journal.

Publisher: Verso
Published in 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-78663-544-0
Pages: 136
Language: English
Price: 4.990 Ft

Grab your books at ISBN+:
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Tuesday-Friday: 12-6pm

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