The diffusion of social media and smartphones has been changing the way photography is produced, circulated and consumed in south-east Turkey. Camera phones and sharing platforms are ubiquitous, and the practice of snapping and sharing pictures has become the norm. This article presents the results of a traditional ethnographic research project focused on the use of social media by ordinary people in a medium-sized town in south-east Turkey, inhabited by a Kurdish and Arab majority. The paper argues that the public display of photographic images reproduces enduring social norms based on traditional values of honor. I consider Facebook photography as a public display through which men and women compete for social recognition, and at the same time constantly attempt to defend their individual and family honor and reputation. I draw from Daniel Miller's (2011) argument that Facebook is a conservative media because it brings back values that have disappeared in the changing offline worlds. In fact, social media platforms reconstruct family relationships and help users to return to the kind of involvement previously experienced in traditional social networks (Miller 2011). Due to the recent migrations from villages, my field-site is inhabited by both rural and urban people. Although the differences existing in real life amongst them are evident, their Facebook visual materials look quite similar. Traditional values are overtly represented on the Facebook wall. Photography emerges as a space where the most conservative and traditional aspects of the self are projected to others. On the other hand, the practices of one to one photo sharing via smartphone applications like WhatsApp create and shape new forms of intimacy. Photo sharing on mobile phones has become a constituent element of intimate relationships amongst young people. Young adults send private messages and photos to friends and prohibited lovers many times a day. Private photographic images create new forms of interpersonal communication and at the same time break traditional aesthetic codes: informality and creativity are important features in one to one photo sharing. Social media photography is having a double effect: public visual material reinforces traditional long-held social norms and values, but one to one photo sharing introduces new and original aesthetics, while creating new types of intimate relationships.