Micahel Wolf's new project, Paris Street View, is a study as historically cognizant as it is contemporary. Using screen captures from Google Street View, Wolf has assembled a collection of images that slyly probe us to question the conventions that regulate 'Street Photography' and all subsequent genres.
My first impression is that the series attempts to renegotiate the functions and 'meanings' ascribed to street & travel photography, especially now- in an era saturated by cultural iconagraphy due in part to mass digital accessibility and viral lifestyle marketing. The series invokes a rich Parisian history of urban photo-narratives, a genre that was mastered half a century ago but that persist without much innovation. Wolf instead weaves something different from old tropes and new technologies, while infusing the project with topical issues that pertain, for example, to digital and computer imaging, globalism and cultural reproduction, and privacy in surveillance societies; note that taking unauthorized photos in public has been banned by many municipalities and countries over the past decade, Paris included.
Paris Street View is not only conceptually rich, but augmented by Wolf's eye for highly structured spatial compositions, his attention to societal underbellies, to the 'unmonitored' daily exchanges that mark all public spaces, and the facade of anonymity. Some know they are looked-at, others remain preoccupied. It is also an inventory of a particular space at a particular time, and the low, grainy resolution serves the voyeuristic component marvellously.
Incidentally, my boyfriend has also located himself on google street view, read his blog about it here.
I highly recommend that you peruse Wolf's website, he has many interesting series.
Thanks Michael Wolf for doing your thang.
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