Phone to Photoshop: Mobile workarounds in young people’s visual self-presentation strategies

Abstract

Differences in income and cultural capital create many major barriers for young people entering creative fields. An increasingly important barrier to entry to tertiary studies or employment in fields of art and design is the growing importance of digital self-presentation in online portfolios. This paper explores the way in which both digital self-presentation and the creation of online portfolios require specialized infrastructure and specific forms of cultural capital. Infrastructural barriers in particular may necessitate extensive resourcefulness and workarounds. We document the barriers and opportunities presented by digital networking for young South African Visual Arts students from two different schools as they learned to showcase their work in digital portfolios and develop self-presentation strategies associated with recognisably professional identities and bodies of work. This paper explores the mobile workarounds and visual strategies they adopt as they negotiate an unequal education system in two different parts of Cape Town. We argue that new mobile designs can and do play a pedagogical role for young people as they assume and challenge ‘disciplined’ identities in the visual arts.