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Texte zur zeitgenössischen Fotografie und digitalen Bildkunst
Looking at the stream of incoming photographs on Flickr confirms our beliefs and prejudices and at the same time is full of surprises — the latter being definitely more interesting. Besides masses of snapshots that may be interesting for a small number of people such as family and friends of the photographers we find basically everything conceivable in the field of photography, including many things we never saw before. For the first time we can observe in real time how new types of images emerge, how motifs become popular, and how recurring patterns get established. There is a remarkable number of quite new memes, the most successful one probably being the "buddy shot" — the self-portrait with friends made with the camera held at arm's length. And among other things, we learn that nowadays an astounding number of people photograph their food before they eat it. This is not only true for festive meals or fancy food that may have been photographed by some people also in the past, it is true for all kinds of food, at home, in restaurants, or at fast food stalls. This is not only the case with exceptional experiences — let's say the first time a European tourist sees a dish of roasted dog in China or a Japanese tourist tries to conceive the physics of a submarine sandwich in France — it is true for everyday experience.
Not long ago this would have been unthinkable, first of all for economic reasons. Not many people would have wasted one frame of film on a slice of pizza, and hardly anybody would have taken a photograph of their meal every day. The person doing it nevertheless would have been considered slightly insane by most of their fellows – and probably they would have been an artist. More interesting, if there was such a person only very few people would have known of him or her. Hardly anybody would have seen the photographs. Today, everybody has the opportunity to look at the photographs of everybody else. A substantial part of the photographic production that was traditionally confined to the realm of privacy is now accessible for a general audience.
23.08.2008
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