The photographic image now dominates our culture. Its abundance has filtered through almost every aspect of communication. The sheer number of images that we have instant limitless assess to is overwhelming for any creative photographer. This has constant stream of images has contributed to the rise of vernacular photography. Working with found images is nothing new, it has been fundamental to contributing the idea of the photograph as an artistic image. But with the internet and this huge amount of images to be instantly attained it has completely opened up possibilities of using vernacular image.
This approach of utilising images with out artistic intention and embedding considered artistic relevance has strong foundations in pop-art (amongst other origins). The term ‘pop-photographica’ describing “functional photo objects” derives from the vernacular image. The way that Andy Warhol would refused to create any new image in favour of using images that already had popularity or iconic value relied on some elements of vernacular image. Recycling these images became a tool to address cultural obsessions. Popular image is everywhere, it is commercialised and distributed as commodity. It detracts from any artistic or considered value the image may contain. This lead artists like Warhol repurposing popular images and embedding cultural reference into his art directly.
Vernacular image can take may forms and doesn't necessarily depend on popular image. The internet, although it adheres to conventional popular culture, its images envelop almost anything and everything. This constant access to millions if not billions of images really opens up the world when using found images to create artistic work. Joachim Schmidt, an artist famed for his series of combined portrait collages all sourced from a town in Germany that were found in the trash. His exploits into found imagery led him to claim that he had probably seen more photographic images than any other person. Yet his fascination with the photographic image has reached a pinnacle when shifting his focus to online image sharing site Flickr. “For the first time in the history of photography we can study the real-time production of snapshot making – globally!”. It is interesting to see an artists excitement at a website that for most people is just for sharing images but for Schmidt it feels like they are giving him their images.
A whole host of artists and photographers have capitalised upon the internet’s image resources to creates their work. It seems that as the our digital world fills with images, a trend of photographers are choosing to utilise these image sources instead of contributing to them. One example of this is a series titled ‘Craig’s List Mirrors’ collated by artist Eric Oglander. Oglander's process for this series has lead him to source images of mirrors taken by users of the popular personal advertisement site Criag’s List. The original purpose of these images are being used to promote a product that the user is trying to sell. Oglander’s keen eye has allowed him to collate photographs that have a true fascination. Photographing a mirror is a genuinely awkward activity and it is this awkwardness that generates an intrigue within the image. It sets a challenge for the novice photographer who simply wants to sell their personal possession. Instead they must choose to produce an image of their own identity as they are reflected within the frame or perhaps an even more invasive image of their own personal living space being reflected back at us.
“It’s like an invasion of privacy almost, and I think that’s why people bring the mirrors outside” - Oglander
All manor of creative approaches are executed in order to shoot these reflective surfaces and we are greeted with images that a full of absurdity or the uncanny and almost a pushed to abstraction. The simplicity of this project really works in its favour. There is something effortlessly genius about the work. These image have been embedded with new intentions and renewed purpose but they provide an creative approach that comments on “anonymity, fragmented realities, voyeurism, notions of truth, and crowd sourcing".
Oglander’s series gained recognition through its tumblr site. It is art that stemmed from an online source and for a long time only existed as a collection online, it is now being turned into an artists book but this has been long after it was a considered realised series of images. This existence within an online gallery has become synonymous with collecting images from internet sources.
Another artist who has taken advantage of internet images and repurposed them for their own artistic intentions is Dina Kelberman. Kelberman’s ongoing series ‘I’m Google’ presents a conscious stream of images all sourced through google images’ reverse image search. Each image flows into the next as one corresponds with another. This sequence of images allow the image to evolve from a water bed to a pingpong table to spaghetti in these strange leaps that feels as if they could never make sense but when we engage with the flow of images it feels completely natural. Google Image’s visually similar function has allowed this work to flourish but Kelbermen is completely dependent on other peoples images to form her own work. Similarities within these images are defined by composition, colour and key words that allows google algorithms to suggest images that it feels are ‘visually similar’.
Like Oglander’s work I’m google is presented to us as a tumblr page that has been re purposed to create a gallery to exhibit within. Presented to us as a grid with three images across we are able to feel the flow of the images successfully, the continuous stream that appears as we scroll down what feels like a limitless page. Scrolling down the page adds a level of interaction with the work as we are revealing the stream of conscious images that google and Kelberman has collected.
Kellerman’s series really begins to visualise the levels of image that exist online as well as interpreting the manner in which we are able to interact with these images and online content in general. These images begin to feel all the same yet we scroll from one end to the other with out looking and we are looking and something wholeheartedly different.
The artist Penelope Umbrico’s collection of images maybe be the most staggering by number alone. Umbrico collected 541,795 photographs of sunsets from popular photo sharing site - flickr. Similarly to Kelberman's work, the images really illustrate the mammoth amount of images contained within the internet. In some sense the sunset image is the most typical image taken of the amateur internet photographer. After downloaded each image , Umbrico crops each image to 4x6 inches to allow them to be printed on online kodak’s machine prints. These images are then displayed on grid on a wall, as well as reuploaded on her own personal flicker page. Grouped together these images loose almost all meaning, as they form patterns they turn into abstraction.
Each time Umbrico creates this work as an installation she retitles her work based on new figure of results she gets back for the term ‘sunset on flickr’.
2,303,057 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 9/25/07
3,221,717 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 3/31/08
4,064,589 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 9/02/08
4,109,500 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 9/09/08
4,786,139 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 1/14/09
5,009,279 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 2/20/09
5,083,088 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 3/06/09
5,332,272 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 4/22/09
5,377,183 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 4/28/09
5,537,594 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 5/30/09
5,858,631 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 7/26/09
5,911,253 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 8/03/09
6,069,633 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 8/27/09
7,626,056 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 7/17/10
7,707,250 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 7/30/10
8,146,774 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 10/15/10
8,309,719 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 11/20/10
8,313,619 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 11/21/10
8,730,221 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 02/20/11
The titles themselves become apart of the art themselves, expressing the growing collective nature of online images sharing. Raising questions of the relevance of each of theses images and wether the fact that there are so many of what is technically the same image retracts all meaning and makes the image fundamentally redundant. How can we really comprehend 8,730,221images of sunsets. Despite the connotations with the sun being the centre of out universe, giving energy too all life and fundamentally allowing photography to exist. I feel this work speaks more about the way images are being handled online, uploaded into this void of existence. Stripping all of this away we are confronted with an image that is vaguely dull surrounded by millions of images that are inherently similar. Is the only way to make these images fascinating by collecting and collating them together and exposing them to the world as a singularity?.
Running along this familiar vein, Evan Hickman’s series ‘American Webcam’ takes images that have been captured on public webcams set up by American’s, in their yard’s or on their farms set up directly to monitor the weather. These public feeds create a flow of images that once replaced by an updated image are lost forever. the images create a somber view of a country that has so much culture. These images feel reduced from a comprehensive reality, they appear quite alien although they are filled with familiarities. The inherently poor quality of the webcam images does something to these photographs. It gives off a quality that almost resembles painting at times, but also creates strange digital glitches woven in to a cascading image.
The series its self reminds me of work that formulates through another one of google’s services - Street View. Since its launch in 2007, street view seems to have been a firm favourite with vernacular or found image photographer. The ability to move around and frame shots replicates the actions of the photographer yet the images created remain fixed and dictated by the software that created them. Artists like Mishka Henner, Jon Rafman, Micheal Wolf and Doug Rickard have all endeavoured to explore the medium of street view photography. It feels now that this style of work has already reached its conclusion, nearly a decade since its launch the service has been capitalised upon by a whole host of artists and creators, myself included, and been stripped of its creative value. I feel that this just goes to show how willing a new generation of artists are to using vernacular image. Once a service like google street view is released the next step is to have an artist make a project surrounding it.