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2009, Apr 14
Peter Funch and computer-assisted hoop-jumping

There’s a new entrant in the field of “photography where everyone is doing the same thing,” and this time, it’s got Boing Boing link juice behind it! When I wrote about this style a couple of weeks ago, I said that it “turns photography into hoop-jumping: ‘did you see how many fools I snapped doing this?’” I had assumed that the photos were documents of an instant that actually happened—if you look hard enough in a city, patterns emerge—but maybe that’s not the case. Have a look:

Kind of amazing how all those people are posing, no? Hey, where are any of the people with cameras? Oh maybe here:

What’s going on here is that Peter Funch has taken a whole bunch of pictures in Times Square (and other NYC locations), and stitched them together later so that it *looks like* everyone was actually there at the same time. Now that I think about it, Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad probably uses this technique too. Color me… bored. As I said the first time, real work was put in to these images, but there’s nothing risked here at all, success was inevitable from the start. Basically this technique moves about as much as HDR flower photography.

I’m left wondering why still cameras were chosen to record these projects. If you’re going to stand in a spot for and wait until someone does [action X] or [is wearing all color Z], why not videotape it?? It would be a lot more interesting to see even a short clip of Times Square filled with people posing for photos, or of a Shinjuku station where people are only waving to each other.

Addendum: If I was a better 2point8 reader, I would have seen this three months ago…

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Photos where everyone is doing the same thing

Why so bitter? Also you picked the worst ones from the series.

hey graham, thanks for the comment.

you’re right, of course—what i wrote was basically a knee-jerk reaction. all the same, i’m still not digging this series, i’ll explain why, hopefully in a better tone.

just to make clear, this isn’t actually about the work being digital, my “evil digital” tag isn’t at all serious. the darkroom can—or maybe always is? blah, boring discussion!—be used to distort images from whatever they were “really like.” so, these photos are the result of a particular technique. it seems to me that this technique is not put to a really interesting use. maybe this series will later have historical value, like edison’s first films, but i right now it strikes me as a gimmick.

but—but!! i only think this work is on the gimmicky side because it doesn’t seem well-conceived as a series: “OK, let’s find people wearing white, let’s find people running,” so on and so on. i agree with you that the camera picture is weak, but actually i like the posing one the best. what if the whole series was only of people posing at different places around new york? wouldn’t that give an interesting idea of how people behave relative to their location? imagine the difference between poses at times square versus ground zero, versus new yankee stadium or whatever it’s called, versus john’s pizza, assuming people pose there!

it’s definitely cool to look at (the images are much better exposed than the other series) but i don’t think i’ll want to come back to it…

Posted by Graham / April 15, 2009 at 9:03 am:

As with all such things, it’s a matter of taste. Perhaps it’s too much exposure to the likes of Zhang Xiaogang and other repetitive artists, but I like that these images go in different directions on the canvas of the city. True, a series needs some cohesion, but the hidden co-location of similar actions distributed in time seems like enough.

What I find most lacking really is the selection of Manhattan. That’s a gimmick I think we should be able to get over.

My favorites, by the way, are kids and manila envelopes. Kids because it’s like aging reversed. Envelopes because I never thought about how ubiquitous those are.

that’s quite fair. i follow mark e. smith when says “repetition repetition repetition…”

here are some similar thoughts, also in the photography world:

When does a shtick become a shtick?

as for manhattan, i wouldn’t blame anyone for living there 😀

Dude, I didn’t even realize they were stitched together. That kills it for me also. How is that any different than a Bill Cunningham collage?

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