Google Street View Photography

Google Street View makes it possible to walk on streets in cities you’ve never been to. Look around, watch locals and interesting architecture, feel the vibe. Internet artist Jon Rafman got inspired by the lots of interesting images that were taken by the three laser range scanners of the Street View car and decided to build a collection of pictures from people who have explored the digital cities in Street View and have taken images of interesting scenes. These new style photographers must have asked themselves “why walk out the door earch morning if you can take beautiful photos on the streets of Google Street View”?

The artist succeeded to take typical urban scenes that are often very funny, but also just good images with nice compositions. Raw images suddenly become loaded with meaning. Rafman reported about his findings in an essay on the blog Art Fag City. He explains why Google Street View is such an interesting photo source:

“Initially, I was attracted to the noisy amateur aesthetic of the raw images. (…) It was tempting to see the images as a neutral and privileged representation of reality — as though the Street Views, wrenched from any social context other than geospatial contiguity, were able to perform true docu-photography, capturing fragments of reality stripped of all cultural intentions.”

—Source: Art Fag City