fotoga

Fotoga is a term used in contemporary photography and digital media to describe a family of practices that combine still or moving photographs with geographic data, interactive interfaces, and augmented reality. The word is a portmanteau of photo and geo, reflecting its emphasis on place-based image making, though its usage varies across contexts.

The term began appearing in art discourse in the 2010s, used by photographers, curators, and scholars to designate projects where images are embedded with metadata and presented in formats that allow user interaction with locations, maps, or AR overlays.

Techniques commonly associated with fotoga include geotagging images, embedding rich metadata such as coordinates, time, and camera settings, layering photographs onto maps, creating interactive galleries, and using augmented reality to display contextual overlays when images are viewed through compatible devices.

Applications range from gallery installations and field documentation to cultural heritage digitization and educational projects, where fotoga methods help situate photographs within physical or spatial narratives.

Reception has been mixed: proponents argue that fotoga enhances context, accessibility, and engagement by linking images to place, while critics caution against over-automation that can undermine photographic decision making, and raise privacy concerns about geolocation.

See also photography, geotagging, augmented reality, locative media, data visualization.