Flâneuring by Google Streetview

“Virtual flânerie” refers to photographic projects that use Google Street View as a mediator between a "non-photographer flâneur" and the urban reality that surrounds him.

As I wrote in the post "Is walking nothing?", nowadays walking and wandering are not seen as harmless acts, especially if combined with the "invasive practice" of taking photographs or videos.

In a world where everyone with a smartphone can take excellent photos and shoot videos, the culture of suspicion has grown exponentially as has the diffusion of cell phones.

Google's "Streetview" project itself, although revolutionary, was judged in a controversial way and in the light of an increasingly strong focus on privacy.

Even if they went unnoticed, there have been frequent episodes of refusal and legal and physical aggression towards Google's vehicles, surmounted by the nine-sensor camera, which nominally cover all the practicable roads of the world.

“....we are confident that the Street View system must be regarded as operating outside of the law....”

(Simon Davies, Director, Privacy International,

from https://jabluteau.com/tag/street-view/, accessed on 1/1 /2023)

Google's "Nine Eyes" camera

From another point of view, the enormous quantity of visual material created by the "Streetview" project has been given free use, once suitably "cleaned" of direct references to the privacy of the individual, of anyone wishing to visit and photograph safely any place in the world without the need to go there even once.

We are dealing with a real artistic current of thought, which goes beyond the concept, so loved by Rebecca Solnit, of wandering, and replaces "footwork" with "mousework".

Google Streetview has also freed the photographer from the task of having a release approved for each subject expressly photographed on the street.

Jon Rafman, a Montreal-based visual artist, has been one of the first, like the painter Bill Guffey and colleague photographers Michael Wolf (Paris Street View (2006), and Manhattan Street View (2010) projects) or Doug Rickard, to create an artistic body of work without using a camera and without ever being in the places and times his work refers to.

Doug Rickard, in his work "A New American Picture (Campany, O'Toole, & Rickard, 2012), states:

“I use Martin Luther King to find the worst and most broken aspects of society.....and he is this great beacon of hope and a hero to many Americans. There's a kind of irony in all of this, an irony that makes me sad."

The virtual flânerie allows Rickard to overcome the inability to travel physically in economically devastated areas of the contemporary United States.

If Lee Friedlander, with his "America by Car", has contributed to a new and modern definition of the flaneur, Rickard has used Google's virtual cars to create an equally virtual version of the flaneur.

In these places, where the American dream has been shattered, Richard makes an act of appropriation of Google's automated gaze to develop his personal, thoughtful gaze as a flâneur.

From the point of view of style, aesthetics, and visual composition, Rickard's "derived" images confirm a link between photographic flaneuring and street photography as well as social documentary.

Doug Richard, No Title

With Rafman we see the first embryos of an alien flaneur with respect to the reality and experiences of which it is a generous dispenser.

“Google Street View is a great manifestation of the present view of reality, which is a “Google-ised reality”"

(Jon Rafman, from an interview (2010))

Rafman, Jon, No Title

Rafman explicitly states that he was inspired by the behaviour of the flâneur to develop his artistic practice, surfing the Internet with:

“...that same sort of detached neutral gaze…that you might have found in walking the streets, the arcades of Paris in the nineteenth century....as the logical conclusion of photography”

(Jon Rafman, from an interview (2010))

Rafman, Jon, No Title

Michael Wolf's style differs from that of his two fellow photographers: Wolf zooms in on the details, even at the cost of having a strong and conscious pixelation. This style reminds me Thomas Ruff and his "Aesthetic of the pixel", so well described by David Campany.

In this way, he manages to obtain compositions which, in my opinion, do not set limits to creativity, despite the fact that they are in fact "found photographs".

Wolf, Michael, from "A series of unfortunate events"
https://photomichaelwolf.com/#asoue/5,accessed on 1/1/2023

Wolf, Michael, from "A series of unfortunate events"
https://photomichaelwolf.com/#asoue/3,accessed on 1/1/2023