Imagine you are an alien, and your daily profession is to search the universe for intelligent life. There are a couple of options in the universe, you – an expert on pictorial intelligence – look at each day in your office. One day Earth is on top of your check list. A drone has just come back, which had collected the pictorial symbols and pictures that the humans have produced. Your device now automatically sorts them in a timeline. You look at the outcome.
It clearly indicates a strong self-interest: for centuries the humans have mostly made pictures of each other, apart from some animals. Their self-interest has been consistent, extends over quite a long period of time and the use of different devices – using earthy brown colours in caves, paint on canvases, and colour film in cameras. Then you frown. You notice that suddenly a fundamental change occurs. Your data visualisation shows a meteoric increase of pictures, after which the humans don’t seem to focus on each other anymore. Instead, the pictures show a world without humans but full of things, buildings and objects.
Have you noticed this, too? If not, look here: in order to verify this little story, luckily we don’t need a drone. You can simply scan the general picture stream on Instagram, Flickr, or Tumbr. And in case you want to check some of the more outstanding examples, look at the lovely picture blog of Soundcloud’s Katharina Birkenbach (who has now like many others moved on to Instagram). Or the Flickr account of both Matt’s from BergLondon’s (Webb & Jones). Or the brilliant stream of Plugimi, in itself a piece of art. Or this lovely one over here from Switzerland. Or … and so on, and so on. It seems as if we have left the portrait of the human to professionals like Hedi Slimane et. al. Everywhere else you find lot’s of pictures with nearly no humans in them. I am sure you can add yourself some examples. And you know what? This makes the once upon a time trained art historian in me quite excited.
For in the history of pictures, this is quite a new development. Up till now, in the hierarchy of genres pictures with humans were valued most. The more humans, even the better: the history painting was top-notch, followed by portrait painting, and third came genre painting which showed scenes of everyday life (still with humans), while animals and finally still life were last in the ranking. Such being the case, the rise of the human-less picture (or massive return of the still life, however you want to name this) is astonishing.
Recently I turned to Norman Bryson’s famous essays on still life painting, “Looking at the Overlooked”. Now surley, abundance and prosperity as reward of living a virtuous life isn’t the topic here. However, the new still lives also negate the human form: there is no narrative, and in most pictures nothing happens. There is no event, apart from the physical exclusion of the human which in this massive appearance becomes an event in itself. So what does this tell us about us? Well. Um. All right.
I decided to explore the explanation for this further. Starting with a list: Like: humans are harder to catch. Compared with architecture and food they never sit still. Or: we don’t want to make our friends upset by exposing them to the digital public. Or: our camera’s are not yet made for history painting pictures. Or: we only publish what is public anyway. Or: why worry, objects are human, too. Or: we are afraid to be sued for the right to privacy. Or: we all feel a bit disconnected.
Please, feel welcome to add. I am going to take this subject with me in my bag for a while to follow it up later.
Interessante Beobachtungen und Gedanken über die Ursachen. Wir war Ähnliches auch schon aufgefallen. Das irritiert mich auch. Siehe hier: http://sprechblase.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/instagram-die-sicht-der-dinge/
Personally, I take a lot of pictures of humans and things. But I publish only those on Flickr and my blog, which don’t show any humans unless it is a major (sports) event.
So maybe you need another empirical source to confirm your thesis?
Well, that would be one answer where all the humans have gone – thanks! However, then it would still be the case, that we humans have started to take ºmoreº pictures with human-empty motifs – we didn’t do them when we were using film, were we?
Also as you can see with Cem Basman: I am not the only one who thinks, there is something going on.
I’m not convinced. There weren’t many (if any) humans in Ansel Adams pictures either, and he’s probably one of the most famous photographers ever. Similar John L. Stoddard’s “Im Fluge durch die Welt” (I believe published ~1900, highly recommended if you can get one somewhere) doesn’t have an awful lot of people in it either.
Apart from that though, dare pointing a camera towards children as a single male these days….
I guess there’s a couple of aspects to that. On Facebook there’s a *lot* of people obviously. On Flickr it’s less and Instagram I don’t know apart from what is showing up on FB. To me it seems that the latter two are traditionally heavily used by the techsters who have an ongoing communication (networked photography is really mainly about communicating) about their lifestyle. Findings in the world, food, coffee and all the rest looking out of plane windows as a proof of mobility, work and the technology that’s enabling both of them.
One hypothesis could be (and that’s one that starts with my own way of taking photos) that the people in the photos are actually not in the frame because they are expected to be *on the other end*, ultimately receiving the photo. I include people in my photos very selectively, mostly because I want to let a friend know that I’ve been with another friend. These photos are always taken with the other in mind rather than the self. Yet then there’s this strange effect that the future self will look at the pictures, a bit like reading old letters. So maybe we are ultimately talking to ourselves? Pix or it didn’t happen!
when i take a picture, it’s about me. if not i want to show that i’m connected to friends, i dont have any intention to show any people. as for example on instagram – i try to provide a insight to a moment of my perception. i cannot do that for others. in past times it was different. a painter usually was paid to make a portrait (leaving all the landscape-painting aside) and the sponsor had a right to choose who’s in and who’s not. with the invention of the camera the initiator and the executer are the same.
Vielleicht auch etwas selektive Wahrnehmung/Filter Bubble? Einige der führenden Instagram-Nutzer aus D pflegen das Genre der Street Photograhy (@jn, @thomas_k) und erhalten auf ihre Fotos deutlich mehr Resonanz als die meisten anderen Still-Fotografen. Auch die Beliebt-Seite auf Instagram ist voller Porträts, man muss sie nur finden.
Andererseits: die technischen Voraussetzungen sind so, dass mit Blick auf die Auslösungsverzögerung, Schnappschüsse nur schwer möglich sind. Gestellte Porträts sind oft nicht so interessant und entsprechen weniger dem Wesen der iPhonegraphy (instant etc.), zudem wirken sie schnell langweilig – insbesondere wenn man die gezeigten Personen nicht kennt und das Bild keine weitere Aussage hat (quadratische Form lädt auch eher zum Kopfporträt ein). Hinzu kommt, dass sich viele Menschen einfach auch nur ungern fotografieren (und anschließend im Netz zeigen) lassen.) Street Photography wiederum mag interessanter erscheinen, ist aber zumindest in D rechtlich eine heikle Angelegenheit.
Weiterhin lohnt es sich zu beobachten, wie die Nutzer Instagram sehen: oft ist es die Dokumentation des eigenen Alltags, die persönliche Narration (welche tollen Orte habe ich erlebt, welche gutaussehenden Speisen habe ich zu mir genommen etc.). So aufregende und bedeutende Menschen trifft man eben nur selten, um den Followern die Tollheit des eigenen Lebens zu vermitteln.
The economic barrier to making photos has gone down with digital photography – when making private photographs you no longer have to make any sort of weighing if the subject is of value to spend those one or two precious shots out of the film of 12, 24 of 36. This has maybe resettled the way private photography has been previously done: it is no longer primarily about indexing and reinforcing social and personal relations, but rather about discovering, indexing and communicating the world we individually inhabit and experience, trying to reinforce the particular value and seek recognition for the originality of that experience, authenticity of our Kodak moments. That might point to a narcissistic worldview hiding behind the object world, but the fact that we post ad nauseam fragments of our individual experience – often isolating the still-life world of our life from its more generalisable and non-egotistic social standing – and seek views, faves and likes for them might imply that social and personal transactions and bonds of recognition in our hyperconnected online lives are now more immediately available and visible anyhow, so that we don’t need the tokens of personal and social bonds that private photos formerly stood for.
Auch hier, lauter Menschen: http://fromnowtoanalogue.tumblr.com/
Interesting observation! Let’s take aside the filter bubble.
Maybe there’s really something there:
Say, for the last 1-2 decade(s) we had this style of bigger, better,faster. An increase in “Technisierung” and “Objektivierung” (see Haben und Sein by Erich Fromm). With the emergence of the Internet, now being an integral part of the whole society, the younger generations come to the conclusion that we are suddenly disconnected from each other. Only connecting through the digital void. Only using objects to keep in touch. Sometimes not being able to distinguish this Facebook Bot from a real person, so we are starting to only interact with those objects. Relying that this object communicates with another object, which, in the end, interacts with another person.
Uhm, where was I? Yes, we are living in world of objects, more over, our modern society seems to fully depend on them. (have to take this thought further) … and in the end, when we are (really) gone, all that’s left are objects.