Lee Mackinnon

Biography

Dr. Lee Mackinnon is a Senior Lecturer in Photography, whose research is largely situated in comparative media studies, feminism and postdigital visual culture. Research outputs explore the shifting technical paradigms that affect how we see and communicate as well as the implicit power structures that shape and privilege certain forms of visual and cultural practice.

We are living through a period in which 'photography' is rapidly evolving. Today, ‘cameras’ and 'phoographs' are used for a variety of 'non-photographic' practices such as reading QR codes; entraining visual recognition software; generating photographs of ‘fake’ events and people. Photographic images in digital networks are code designed to be understood and 'read' by other machines. What is the future of photography in an era where photographic images are no longer passive objects, but agents active in engineering social systems?

Recent work explores the use of personal data to accelerate the financial productivity of everyday practices (such as dating apps). Forms of gamification are seen to further financialize adherence to rule-based social systems. What are the implications of our increased reliance upon digital infrastructures in which personal data is the prime commodity? How does distribution of images on digital networks support the inadvertent promotion of right- wing populism? How are our rights and duties being reconfigured by digital networks and labour?

Lee is accepting PhD proposals on: Theories of the Gaze (Foucault; Lacan; Malvey; hooks; Kosofsky-Sedgwick); Critical Algorithm Studies + the Histories of Computing; Intersectional Feminism; Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the image. Ecofascism and the Operational Image.