The seminar will look at and beyond the most interesting phenomena linking photography and Internet photoblogs, Twitter, Facebook, online galleries and more - tackling some of these broad questions: How are online photography galleries and curated art blogs changing the way we receive and view photography? What does it mean that newcomers from all over the globe can participate? Is it stimulating innovation, fresh ideas and talent or are we facing visual overload and global mediocrity? What does this broad access do to individual sensibility? And what of the role of digital curators - important filters or replicating the gallery system? The panellist will also look into how the various online platforms have become multidimensional and can be used for different purposes; self-marketing for some, new forms of curating for others, social network for others and so on.

Live interactive broadcast on Open Sessions:

1. Yumi Goto: online strategies of the creative professional. The session will focus on how a creative professional uses online tools such as Twitter, Facebook, curated blogs as a platform; reflecting on the changes in professional career because of this in the last ten years and the impact on the photographers in Asia that Yumi has been presenting during FORMAT11 conference. What are the troubles of working online-based and how a ‘digital curator’ role in this supports the visibility for the photographers?

2. Amy Stein: the reception of photography in the age of Internet. This part of the seminar will focus on how people's relationship to the photographic image is changing as more of our interactions with photos are happening online; not experiencing a photo in a physical or tactile space (gallery, museum, print) but only limited to a screen. What does it mean when our primary interaction with a medium long associated with capturing "the real" happens in a virtual space? Are the artificial restraints of online platforms (screen dimensions and resolution, the dictated dimensions of Flickr and Facebook photo display areas) constraining artists or forcing us towards a common banality? Which artists are addressing this change and making work that comments on it or that is intended to be seen only online?

3. Andy Adams: how Web 2.0 has impacted the modes of production, exhibition and distribution of photography in the 21st century. This session will focus on self-published digital media (blogs and social networks), remote community collaboration, crowdsourced creation and funding, distributed Internet promotion, online community organizing and exhibition across multiple channels. How all these interacting approaches have effects and influences on the 'industry'?

Organized and curated by Alfredo Cramerotti in the framework of FORMAT11 International Photography Festival. Image from the "Blogger Series" by Gabriela Herman.