Forgetting Pictures

Photographic Experience page

After a four-hour hike down into the Grand Canyon and anticipating a longer ascent, her partner and Elena Esposito were standing at Plateau Point, admiring the spectacular view of the Colorado River below. Within a few minutes, a young tourist came down the trail, turned to ask us to take her photo, and immediately retraced her path without stopping to take in the breathtaking vista. Where did that image of an unobserved landscape end up? Who looks at it and why? What is the meaning of extensive digital images constantly being produced and posted online? What does this use reveal about the relationship of our society with time, experience, and representation?

In his presentation of the project Le Supermarché des Images (The Supermarket of Images), Peter Szendy writes that “we live in a world that is increasingly saturated with images”—there are too many, and there is not space for all of them. Back in 2011, in his installation Photography in Abundance, Erik Kessels stacked a room with a million photos that had been uploaded to Flickr in twenty-four hours, showing this in a tangible way. When does the abundance of images become excessive, to the point of saturation? Compared to previous eras, how is our social space overloaded as if it “can no longer contain the images that constitute it”? page

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