Dear all, at first im really sorry for my delay, there were long, rough days in the last weeks. Yersterday I arrıved in istanbul and found time in this busy city.
To refelect a location, it’s also needed to reflect the pictures we have. My picture of another place based on the pictures I see. So, can the Pictures talk with us? What can they tell us? How can they come together and fit to a language that we understand?
In the last weeks I began with a projekt. As starting point serves a selection of images from my own photo collection. The Question was also how interchangeable my pictures are, especially from foreign places. Using the Google images backsearch, it will reverse out a visual media from the original collection and throws it back into the flood of images Google is showing. A variety of “visually similar images” will be presented by Google. There are similar color components and the distribution of the image is measured, also outlines and forms are compared. I abuse this search system. Usually this is used to upload your own images on Google and then control who uses our pictures (maybe) illegally.
The amount is also indicative to images of certain content meaning it’s mirroring social aspects. The inklusion und exclusion from Pictures and image content shows also a lot. It’s interesting how close the Google images are thematically to my self made images, even though they show something entirley different.
I will show some examples
Left is a picture taken by my self in Paris and right a Google result.
My picture which shows a man with a shopping cart on western streets, is again split up by google. In western and third world. An ethnological and economical separation.
The image of a dark skinned man with shopping cart returned in the search results mainly as Indian with car or white guy with shopping cart. The shopping cart, a symbol of capitalism and the Western world. The shopping cart on the photo is ironically used to earn money.
Thematically the only picture matching was a man in Greece also selling Maroni. The background in the right picture shows that the city in which he lives is economically inferior to the city ın the left picture. We also know it is a fact that greece is going through a financial crisis right now. The initial position of the two men, however, seems just the opposite. One improvised with what he had found, the other grilled with pretty professional equipment. In Greece money once was available.
Near Notre Dame, under a bridge, by the river, homeless people have set up. The ” visually similar ” Google results show People climbing on a mountain, rock or doing river rafting.
