The World as Image and the Image of the World: Photographing Google Street View

Abstract

This essay focuses on artworks created through the reproduction and appropriation of images available in the interface of Google Street View. As a reflection of the growing proliferation of images produced by automated cameras, independently of human perception and cognition, these artworks provoke a reconsideration of the photographic act, the role of the artist as a commentator on and curator of images, the sublimation of authorship thus entailed and the ontology of the photographic image. The fact that such artworks are created by extracting images from the GSV interface could be perceived as indicative of certain visual redundancies. This article argues, on the contrary, that the photographic works in question entail their specific creative techniques and modes of aesthetic appropriation.