ABSTRACT
A large part of what is ordinarily done with family photographs, whether prints or files, is about making them mobile. Photos are also sent between family members living much closer to each other. The vast majority of family photographs moves along familial routes and settles in domestic spaces. The sustained production and circulation of these particular sorts of serialised image objects worked with contemporary ideas about race to rearticulate human subjectivity. The term Poole uses to integrate her account theoretically is 'visual economy'. The practice of emailing family photos is different from free gifting them, and, being embedded in different practices that call on different photographic affordances, the family snap changes somewhat when it is emailed. They are participants in familial and friendship networks. Early in the technology's history, 'businessmen invaded professional photography from every side'. Recognising the diversity and complexity is crucial if we are not to overestimate the hegemony of the visual economy so powerfully described by Poole.
