The internet has created this huge pool of images, a collection so large that it is impossible to comprehend the trillions of images that exist trapped in a digital database. This huge set of image data has come from our own desire to upload images on image sharing platforms such as Instagram or Flickr or Facebook. This may be a completely narcissistic step, when thinking of images like the selfie, evidencing that you yourself were somewhere in order to gain ‘likes’. Are these sites sole purpose to provide some sort of self satisfaction?. Your own personal Instagram becomes a profile of your identity, made up completely of images. Of course there are excluding circumstances but it feels like there is overwhelming evidence to show that these social sites success come from a persons desire for self promotion.
One knock on effect of this is people with cameras everywhere. With what ever reasoning people have our public space becomes dominated by people with their personal cameras documenting their own journeys, paths and lives. I’m incredibly curious to know the percentage of images that get taken compared to the number that are uploaded online. Yet this isn't really anything new, we have all been aware of the huge changes that smartphones have brought to photography. It is no surprise that images are being uploaded in their trillions per year and the invention of the selfie stick (no matter how ridiculous) shouldn't really be a shock.
What interests me is how this is filtering into the galleries and museum. What is the driving motivation to capture a poor quality image of a rembrandt, a sneaky hip shot of a Warhol (while the guard is still in the room), or perhaps the pinnacle of it all a selfie in front of the Mona Lisa. There seems to be a definite trend towards galleries accepting people’s personal cameras, they know that it is good promotion for their own business (prehaps the V&A haven't got the message yet). After having a loose discussion about this with a peer, I started to think if and how the gallery is becoming more Instagram friendly, as well as what the most Instagrammed gallery spaces are.
I could say quite confidently that the Mona Lisa is up there as the most Instagrammed painting in a gallery. But I feel part of this is just within the process of experiencing the Mona Lisa, the small amount of time you are allowed in front of the painting almost requires it to be photographed to be able to withhold this fleeting glance.
From my own personal Instagram experience I felt that Yayoi Kusama’s bold interiors and installations could lay claim to the most Instagramable art exhibition as it tours around the world. Her work feels suited to the medium, it is screaming out to be photographed. The intrigue that is created with the images taken manifests in convoluting patterns and saturated colours that are just waiting to be ‘liked’. Her infinity room has got to be a hot favourite of Instagram. The mirrored walls give the ability to take an image of yourself surrounded by the art itself playing into the hands of the image sharing platform.
The existence of a photographic image depicting a painting house in a museum can be incredibly useful. Google Art’s project goes to show how making these sorts of images available online increases arts accessibility for everyone. You now no longer have to be able to afford a trip to Florence to see the art in the context of the Uffizi’s gallery walls. Yet the 360 virtual reality photographic images that google uses to capture theses museums will never become a substitute for the real thing.
One the other side of this we have a whole host of museum patrons bringing their own cameras into museums in order to document and upload what they want (of course all based upon galleries photography restrictions.) This creates a strange and confrontational paradox and really begins to question the purpose and state of photography. On the one hand we have an image, a painting or piece of sculpture, that has been carefully crafted and considered and is now being preserved in the care of the museum. On the other hand we have the Art’s audience using their camera to take a snapshot of this art. This instant image will never truly justify the care and attention that went into making the art, neither will it be a good enough document of the art itself compared to the preservation of the museum. What is it then that is warranting people to take these images?
I feel that they are taking away the memory of vision, stealing a piece of the art as if it was their own, preserving the time that they were stood in front of something that they admired.
We are able to pin this personal connections to these photos, but what purpose does it fill to upload these images to an online profile. For the most part the internet already holds an image that is far better suited in terms of documenting the art itself. An image that will have far clearer detail taken on a professional camera most likely by a professional photographer. Yet I feel that people’s internet skills do not allow these images to be located by the average user and its far easier to take their own image.
This has lead to a huge amount of image data existing for any piece of art in a museum or gallery that has a large footfall. All of these images are basically doing the same thing yet they have an attachment of an individual who has taken the time to upload the image. For me to find these images they will have also had to add some sort of caption or meta data to the image. Yet images without theses tags also exists but become unsearchable.
In response I have begun sourcing and collating images taken within the gallery space. I felt that I should chose a site specific place and collect all the documented images that I could find. After debating various options I decided to just start collecting images and see what sort of visual impact they had. For this I chose the Rothko room at the Tate Modern. This was a place that had become like a tourist attraction in itself, It has a great deal of recent history and has almost become like a silent chapel within the museum. Rothko’s paintings, The Seagrams Murals, are a part of the Tate’s permanent collection so I knew that there would be a large amount of images taken within the space. I wanted these images to all come from user uploaded websites and felt that sourcing from Instagram fitted the fundamentals of what I had been beginning to explore.
As I mentioned before these images had to have keywords tagged to them in order for me to find them. Instead of searching through Instagram I used a google search that looked like this ‘site:instagram.com "rothko" Tate Modern’. This gave me results specifically from any page within the instagram.com domain, these results must contain the work “rothko” but should also have the words Tate or Modern attached too. From my first search I retrieved 10 pages of links to images that had been uploaded onto Instagram. There was a great selection of image from peoples selfies to images of the whole room panoramas to details of the paintings. I immediately felt that I had this strange connection with the room with out actually being in the space. From all these images and all these angles I could imagine and clearer and clearer vision of the room. On a second search for the exact same terms a week later there was almost a completely new set of images becoming available. I realised that google was only allowing the most recently uploaded images to display as results. In one way this was slightly frustrating, as I was not able to complete a full collection of all the images taken within this room and uploaded to Instagram. But also this allowed me to treat this as a replenishing source of images that would be constantly updated week by week.
I began grouping these images in various patterns. Images with single paintings, images with multiple paintings, images with nothing else in the frame but the painting, Images that had bodies blocking the paintings. I didn't have an immediate plan with what I was going to do with the images, if anything at all. So I felt it was important to being playing and experimenting with what was in front of me to begin picking out themes that could vitalise this work.
Along side this, I feel that I should focus part of my research to the life and work of Mark Rothko to try to define what drove his work and how the work and artists themselves, would react to having this trove of daily images being taken.