Formalism in Google Street View Images
In the 70’s and 80’s I spent a lot of time “street shooting”. I wandered down streets and back lanes with my Leica camera looking for urban scenes that attracted me. I was interested in the way photographs were put together. I gave equal importance to all elements, even seemingly inconsequential background shapes, and people were just one more object that could be used to construct my formal arrangements. My position relative to the scene was flexible and the timing of the shot was mine. I could quickly shift positions and wait patiently and grab that instance in time when everything and everyone fell into place. The possibilities were infinite.
Digital photography has totally changed the way we take photographs and given us opportunities never before available. The technology of Google Maps Street View allows us to actually see houses and buildings at the street level anywhere in the world. A few years ago, who would have believed we would be able to sit at our computers and, through Google Street View, visit most of the cities in the world as if we were walking down their sidewalks!
I wondered if I could find formally beautiful images within the constraints of the Street View technology. The process of discovery began as I picked a city to focus on and patiently moved along its streets looking for images with potential. The images that are most appealing to me are the ones that are interesting from a compositional perspective. The subject matter may be mundane but the way the photograph is constructed, the arrangement of its elements, and its formal structure are what really excite me. In many of the images I visualize the photograph in shapes, colors and composition that subtly abstracts the real subject matter.
As I explored the cities from the Google Maps perspective my original street shooting process changed and I became a selector of images rather than a photographer. Within Street View I do have some limited control to move the viewpoint right or left to solidify the composition but I am still working with some one else’s images. I have moved closer to the found art genre. The beauty is there; I just have to find it. The original intent of Google’s photographs was informative, not artful. Many of them are images that no photographer would ever attempt to take. The technology used by Google often introduces aberrations to the images: blurred faces, horizontal misalignment, and distorted objects. Along with the copyright symbols these distortions remind us that these images are being created by unconscious technology that is not informed by artistic intelligence. The images become artful only through a rigid selection process that by necessity involves judgments made by the human brain.
Digital photography has totally changed the way we take photographs and given us opportunities never before available. The technology of Google Maps Street View allows us to actually see houses and buildings at the street level anywhere in the world. A few years ago, who would have believed we would be able to sit at our computers and, through Google Street View, visit most of the cities in the world as if we were walking down their sidewalks!
I wondered if I could find formally beautiful images within the constraints of the Street View technology. The process of discovery began as I picked a city to focus on and patiently moved along its streets looking for images with potential. The images that are most appealing to me are the ones that are interesting from a compositional perspective. The subject matter may be mundane but the way the photograph is constructed, the arrangement of its elements, and its formal structure are what really excite me. In many of the images I visualize the photograph in shapes, colors and composition that subtly abstracts the real subject matter.
As I explored the cities from the Google Maps perspective my original street shooting process changed and I became a selector of images rather than a photographer. Within Street View I do have some limited control to move the viewpoint right or left to solidify the composition but I am still working with some one else’s images. I have moved closer to the found art genre. The beauty is there; I just have to find it. The original intent of Google’s photographs was informative, not artful. Many of them are images that no photographer would ever attempt to take. The technology used by Google often introduces aberrations to the images: blurred faces, horizontal misalignment, and distorted objects. Along with the copyright symbols these distortions remind us that these images are being created by unconscious technology that is not informed by artistic intelligence. The images become artful only through a rigid selection process that by necessity involves judgments made by the human brain.
Cities visited via Google Street Scenes
This show presents images from cities around the world that met my artistic vision for successful formal images.
(What about copyright?)
(What about copyright?)
In terms of copyright, for Google images, Google would prefer you to always link back dynamically, in real time, to their Street View database when referencing a Street View Image. I had spent over a year searching the world using Google's Streetview for artistic images existing in the Street View database. I saved the dynamic links in a file for future use on my website. I wanted to meet Google's copyright requirements for StreetView images so for more than a year I worked with an HTML expert in England (Brian Cryer http://www.cryer.co.uk) who was able to create slideshows on my website where the slide show was built, in real time, from dynamic links to Google's database. His HTML code would retrieve the current StreetView images, in real time, and then build a slideshow from them and display the images. It took him almost a year, part time, to get this to work. This was a hobby of his so he didn't charge me anything but it was an amazing technical accomplishment!! Then one day as I was looking at my Google slideshows on my web site, to my surprise, many of the images had changed to nondescript, ugly photographs. Then I realized that this was because Google had redone their Street View images for certain countries and towns and that my carefully selected and framed photographs no longer existed! This prompted me to do screen captures of the remaining images in my collection to preserve some of the work I had done.
