“the poor image is a rag or a rip; an AVI or a JPEG, a lumpen proletarian in the class society of appearances, ranked and valued according to its resolution. The poor image has been uploaded, downloaded, shared, reformatted, and reedited. It transforms quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, contemplation into distraction.”
Hito Steyerl
‘In Defense of the Poor Image’, 2009
Under neoliberal capitalism of the global North, nothing is safe from commodification, even culture becomes commodified, and images are no exception. From the screenshot of a meme on your phone to the 300dpi image locked away behind Shutterstock’s watermark and paywall, images exist in a hierarchy. Their value is often measured based on conditions like their accessibility, authenticity, and quality. Depending on these conditions, some images are more valuable. Images become a commodity like any other and the system of their valuation is defined by the logic of capital. If an image is
productive towards capital gain, then it is valuable.
What is aesthetically valuable under neoliberal capitalism? Perhaps things like cleanliness, legibility, profitability, intelligence, and beauty.1 If an image can embody and communicate value systems, depending on how it is made and circulated, it can do the work of either reinforcing or subverting them. In this way, images have the power to bolster or disrupt systems of power. This is evident in the effective use of images in state-sanctioned propaganda, as well as in their use in protest movements and resistance against the state.
Hito Steyerl, German conceptual artist and media theorist, argues that it is this neoliberal commodification of culture that is to blame for the elevation and mainstreaming of some images and the marginalization of others.
Steyerl coined the term ‘poor image’ to describe such devalued images. Poor images are low resolution, and highly compressed. “Poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value within the class society of images— their status as illicit or degraded grants them exception from its criteria. Their lack of resolution attests to their appropriation and displacement.”2 Here, she refers not only to poor as in the erosion of image quality, but also to poorness as an economic state, making poor images equivalent to the working class or proletariat in Marxist terms and the rich image to the
upper class or bourgeoisie. “Being out of focus lowers one’s value as an image.” In the same way a person that has more money is treated as more valuable to society, an image of higher resolution too becomes more valuable.
Steyerl argues there is a potential here for such disregarded images to be a political tool in a world of rapid digital reproduction and global circulation. In the same way the working class can be radicalized by their devaluation, so too can the poor image. Constantly copied, shared, and recontextualized, the poor image thrives on mobility rather than polish or resolution. A scrappy, resilient force that undermines elitism, the poor image can exist as a rebellion against neoliberal values which make us, along with images, into commodities.
We are often annoyed when the image quality is poor on a video while it buffers, something is not being experienced in the smoothest way possible. It is not as we wanted it to be.
Pixelation indicates poorness or an interruption of experience. Degraded image quality and the negative response it engenders invites us to critique our expectations around consumption. Here, I argue that our need for media to be of a certain quality comes from a neoliberal logic that values optimization, efficiency and smooth consumption. The poor image fails to deliver here. Herein lies the ironic beauty of
the poor image. As Steyerl writes: “it mocks the promises of digital technology,” the favourite child of corporate neoliberal America. We are often taught to equate high quality with value. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram recently admitted that Reels with less engagement are downgraded in playback quality. Saying “We bias to higher quality (more CPU intensive encoding and more expensive storage for bigger files) for creators who drive more views.” Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today argues that there are consequences here. He writes that under this model “less viewed content loses out, as the reduction in playback quality
will likely inhibit engagement, and compound that initial lack of views even further over time.”3 This naturally brings to mind the adage “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” Quite literally, favourable images that bring more people to Instagram become richer in resolution, taking up more space and becoming more visible, while other images are degraded in resolution and pushed out of sight. Here, we see the tendency to equate poor in quality to poor in value. To increase engagement and thus shareholder value, Instagram equates views and value and thus pushes lesser viewed videos into pixelated poverty. Effectively making an image class system. This is an example of how neoliberal media corporations uphold an image hierarchy. But what if we embrace the poor image intentionally? Poor images often go viral precisely because of their rawness and accessibility. By deliberately employing the aesthetic of poorness, we can critique the systems that commodify images and prioritize their marketability. The poor image can function as a critique of our expectations around how and what we are consuming. The poor image challenges an aesthetic experience designed to be pleasing, effortless, and ultimately profitable. In this way, the poor image has the potential to be used as a tool of resistance, refusing to comply with neoliberal systems that commodify both culture and human experience.
The poor image also queues up a radical potential to disrupt traditional avenues of media production and distribution. The very nature of the poor image resists institutional control. Poor images circulate widely online and care little for original authorship. The sheer ubiquity and fundamental accessibility of poor images makes them a good tool for democratization of knowledge production and sharing. The poor image is by everyone, for everyone. The poor image is anti-artist-asgenius, the capitalist
notion that an artist must make a brand for themselves, trademark their IP, and make a bag. The poor image mocks skill and talent. Its ubiquity defies the capitalist logic that privileges scarcity and gatekeeping. For example, the mutation of a meme online happens at the hands of many authors. With multiple layers of text written shoddily over previous text to add new meaning and context, TikTok watermarks displayed in screenshots of screenshots, resolution depleting each time it is reposted, authorship becomes collectivist in nature. There is the occasional territorial meme page admin but largely, the OP or original poster often cares not that their post
This image of a cat was originally posted to Reddit under the thread r/aww in 2016.4 Since, the image been become a meme, taking on many iterations.
is taken and remixed, it is in the spirit of the meme sharing that we are all contributors, authors, and owners of such images. The word meme, etymologically, stems from the Greek word ‘mimema’ meaning ‘that which is imitated’. Meme culture is remix culture. Which has always honoured multiplicity in authorship and been problematic in the world of copyright which seeks to commodify and make cultural units into ownable property. Memes are made and remade, cut and pasted, screenshotted and altered by the hands of many.
Steyerl, borrowing from Juan Garcia Espinosa’s idea of ‘imperfect cinema’, states that the poor image does the work of “blurring the distinction between consumer and producer, audience and author,” it “insists upon its imperfection, is popular but not consumerist, committed without becoming bureaucratic.” This communal spirit prioritizes participation more than prestige. The poor image represents a democratization of cultural production and critiques the hierarchical structures that privilege elite creators and institutions. As Metahaven argues in their book Can Jokes Bring Down Governments: Memes, Design and Politics, this collectivist approach to authorship and use of the internet for distribution, fundamentally “becomes revolutionary because it exists in a shared gene pool.”5
Cats are often used as the center piece for memes or ‘image macros’. ‘LOLcats’ are one of the earliest genres of memes, first appearing online in the mid-2000s. Metahaven discusses the symbolic relevance of cats to meme culture and resistance: “cats are not eager to please; they are not likely to give in to any false choices presented to them,” going further to say “cats are today’s political animal.”
Here, as compared to the original image, we can see the process of mutation and general image degredation through the process of posting, remixing, and reposting. Visual indicators of this are the visibility of the TikTok watermark (which appears when someone saves something from the app), and use of image cropping and text-blocking to alter the image’s message. General degredation of resolution is another indicator of the image’s journey through the internet, indicative of the multiplicity of authorship.
Memes are a particularly powerful form of poor image protest because they are by and for the people. On the surface I argue for the effectiveness of memes as protest because they can offer levity to seemingly very serious times. But their reach and ability to connect people is perhaps their key effectiveness in protest. Metahaven discusses the political power of the distribution of memes online, saying “memes play a distinct role in protest; they seem to be to the resistance of today, just as “political posters” were yesterday— the embodiment of shared
ideas in a community.” The meme is a method, available to be wielded by anyone, to connect, build community, and selfpoliticize. Metahaven seems to point to the sheer ubiquity of memes and their poorness, calling them “the internet’s equivalent of cardboard.” Think of every protest you’ve ever attended, you will likely have seen a cardboard sign with a protest slogan or demand. In her book From Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power, An Xiao Mina says memes are “the street art of the social web.”6 The common thread here is the immediacy with which messages can be communicated. In protest posters, street art,
meme as political poster wheat-pasted on the side of building in Montréal, Quebec, protesting Premier François Legault’s decision to significantly increase tuition for out-of-province and international students. This as part of an effort by the Coalition Avenir Québec to decrease English-speaking population in the province.
and memes alike.
Mina argues memes are a kind of cultural shorthand, able to communicate complex ideas and theories in a compact, compressed, easily distributable format. Due to the reach of the domain in which they are circulated, the WWW, memes can offer a reach other formats of protest art cannot. Providing the ability to spread points of view that might otherwise remain marginalized.
Low cost production, rapid reproduction and an accessible aesthetic makes them a savvy grassroots political tool. The poorness of its meme becomes its power. In this way, memes are not just for the lolz; they can be acts of resistance, tools for mobilization, and a method of connecting people with shared ideology.
this meme effectively resists the ideology of individualism, a keystone of neoliberal capitalism, and instead encouraging the strengthening of community.
It is also important to note the trouble with the poor image. As Steyerl points out, just because poor images can be used for progressive ends doesn’t mean they always will be. In a similar tone Mina says of memes: they are varied and complex and they “must contend with the existing politics of our public spaces,” and this of course is no straightforward task. The poor image, while it can be used for the good fight, can also be used for the not-so-good fight. Memes are a popular means of visual communication amongst bigoted 4chan forums. A lot of the reasons that make the poor image (memes included) an effective protest strategy also make them an effective tool for hate speech and false information. The online environment through
which they are distributed is equally unpredictable. The internet is a wild wild west. It is a place that connects individuals and allows them to share their ideas but it is also simultaneously “a battleground for commercial and national agendas,” containing “experimental and artistic material, but also incredible amounts of porn and paranoia,” as Steyerl describes it. While it refuses commodification it is also siphoned through “some of the most advanced commodification techniques.” We see the contradiction this presents. Acknowledging this trouble, Steyerl argues that despite this the poor image’s value still prevails in its ability to create “disruptive movements of thought and affect,” proposing that it may take its place “in the genealogy of carbon-copied pamphlets, cinetrain agit-prop films,
underground video magazines and other non-conformist materials which aesthetically often used poor materials.” She says the poor image “builds alliances as it travels,” and that as it loses “visual substance it recovers some of its political punch.” In all its malleability, the poor image remains but one visual tool and a healthy amount of media literacy goes a long way in terms of how we are reading them.
There is no doubt that the way ahead lies in the organization of community and disaffected groups’ refusal of their oppression. We may consider the poor image as a kind of working-class visual language tool that, when used intentionally, can connect people across our globalized world and strengthen the collective spirit for change and critique systems of oppression. Or if at the very least, can help us feel some
sort of levity in these severe times. Ultimately, the poor image functions as a tool for both disruption and distraction, connection and confusion, it reminds us that imperfection carries a powerful message, but also perhaps that the most important work is done offline.
1 when I say beauty here, I mean as it defined by white supremacist and colonial standards
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Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of The Poor Image,” e-flux Journal, issue #10 (November, 2009)
Andrew Hutchinson, “Instagram Downgrades Video Quality for Less Viewed Clips,” Social Media Today (published October 27, 2024)
https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/54lsht/i_call_them_airplane_ ears/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Metahaven: Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design and Politics, Strelka Press (April, 2013)
Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power, An Xiao Mina, Beacon Press (January 2019)
This zine was written and designed by Myra Lintaman to meet the course requirements of DART 441: the Culture of Images taught by Chris Moore under the Faculty of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in November 2024.
It is set in Terminal Grotesque and makes use of both Regular and Open character styles. Terminal Grotesque is an open source typeface designed by Raphaël Bastide, with the contribution of Jérémy Landes and was released through Velvetyne Type Foundry.
The front cover features a symbol from ‘Cairo’ which is a bitmap dingbat font designed by Susan Kare for Apple c. 1984. The back cover features an image of an Opte Project visualization of routing paths of the Internet, sourced via Wikipedia.
Special thank you to Dylan Razzell and all the gay people in my phone.
nicedamage.bigcartel.com
@nice.damage
