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Today, I found the
new york times "lens" project online. It mediates the power of mining photographs online. Like the imagery one can cull from a google image search, the results are charmingly "common denominator," but authorized by a media behemoth.
I like their term: "visual journalism." The premise is that average people around the world post visuals that make up an overall report. What an opportunity. I spent about an hour and a half traveling around the world looking at the collection of cheerful snapshots, in search of real grit, real politics, real photo journalism from the populace. Today's online curation is from this source.
As expected, the usual tropes endure: pets, landmarks (the golden gate bridge is very popular), centered family photos, mother and child sleeping, flowers, cute children, romantic landscapes, spiderwebs wet with dew, church gatherings. Most of it the self-censoring propaganda of world wide happiness. You find a similar ilk of imagery on Facebook.
However, to my surprise, there exists an additional, albeit very thin, layer of political statment. I detected a small current of individuals publishing slightly more realistic snapshots (. . .I mean, there are some pretty serious things going on out there in the world--but by the tone of this imagery is quite romantic). Most notably, I found countless representations of homeless people world wide, some floods and oil rigs. From russia, I found some melancholic statements and moody individual portraits. In no way did I see all images available. . . this is a first impression. enjoy!
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1.laurie Morrison, California 2.Los Gatos, California 3.Maja Hitij, Jordan 4.Dong Kil park 5.Doha-Qatar 6.California 7.Whitebluff,Tennessee 8.Unionville, Indiana 9.Marcus (photographer), OHIO 10.Students-Islamic Universityn of Technology, Gazipu 11.Barbara Jani, Texas 12.Kurt, South Korea 13.Nepal (text says something about it being a very poor country with an SUV fantasy) 14.Gali Tibbon, jeruselum 15.Laith Al Majali, Jordan 16.Marwan (photographer), Bangladesh 17.Moiz Rajkotwala, Dubai 18.MartinAlbrecht, Jakarta, Indonesia
*I tried to take good notes as I did screen captures. . .in some cases there was no name provided or just a penn name. Most photographers wrote captions, some informative, some personal.
Coincidentally, here's the original ad for
"Family of Man" 1955 in a vintage magazine. This historic photography exhibition, curated by Edward Steichen, really inspires me. I think this "lens" project is an updated echo of "Family of (Hu)Man."
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