Photography is always subjective, that is, until the robotic snapping of images by GSV? It is neutral, truthful, unbiased recording of 'reality'. An automated camera shot from a height of 8 ft from the middle of the street. Faces are blurred for privacy. The outcome is useful, practical; but from a different vantage point, aesthetically and philosophically interesting also - there's no 'noise' from social and cultural contexts in these images. Everything seems to be recorded, but at the same time there is "no significance accorded to anything". And it's based on this that Jon Rafman curated a new world in a new way, choosing photos and play the role of landscape photographer on one day, and family portrait maker on another.
While the images are 'detached', viewers like us still always interpret them. "Taking photos in an artless and indifferent way does not remove our tendency to see intention and purpose in images". The loneliness and anonymity inherit in the images contradict with "what we want as social beings: we want to matter; we want to count and be counted".
So how should we interpret the images? "Google does not necessarily impose their organisation of experience on us; rather their means of recording may manifest how we already structure our experience".
Rafman's challenge and critique is interesting: "these collections seek to convey contemporary experience as represented by GSV. We are bombarded by fragmentary impressions and overwhelmed with data, but we often see too much and register nothing. In the past, religion and ideologies often provided a framework to order our experience; now, Google has laid an imperial claim to organize information for us. Sergey Brin and Larry Page have compared their search engines to the mind of God and proclaimed as their corporate motto, “do no evil.” Although the Google search engine may be seen as benevolent, GSV present a universe observed by the detached gaze of an indifferent Being. Its cameras witness but do not act in history. For all Google cares, the world could be absent of moral dimension."
And indeed by 'reclaiming' these images, Rafman seeks to "reassert the significance of human gaze" and bring out the humanity once again.
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