ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the circulation and display of camera phone images taken during the London bombings in July 2005. It considers how such creations became meaningful within the emerging field of citizen journalism during that period and argues that the aesthetics of the amateur played a key role in terms of shifting the institutional lens of reporting. Recent deployments of the notion of memory work further highlight the difficulty of creating a more integrative media practice. A relation of witnessing is effectively established between viewer and the photographer, or rather between the viewer and the image as the image comes to stand-in for another relational moment. In being required to engage with citizen contributions, however, professionals have also been forced to reformulate their role as guardians of public knowledge, a process that was staged in highly positive terms during the reporting of the bombings. Journalists may choose to identify as citizens, as has been recently suggested by Stuart Allan.
