Typology in the Public Domain
This morning I followed a tweet from the Telegraph Picture Desk that led me to a facebook group started by some people in the north-east of England. I found the images immediately compelling: lo-fi in execution, yet individual photographs moved me in different ways – some humorous, some sinister.
by Jessica via Facebook
by Wayne Pyle via Facebook
What continues to amaze me is the power of photography and the internet to inspire the public imagination. It’s easy to dismiss these internet phenomenons as fads or a temporary craze; however I find the sheer velocity of these internet movements to be quite incredible – from a Facebook group that was started sometime around the middle of June to the pages of several national newspapers in around three weeks!
by Wayne Pyle via Facebook
by Wayne Pyle via Facebook
For me the beauty of the “Lying Down” group is its apparent lack of motive. There is no intention to make art as such, yet driven by competitiveness and a sense of humour, the imagination of the contributors is forced to be increasingly inventive.
by Lynda Armstrong via Facebook
by Philip Barton via Facebook
by Christina Cowley via Facebook
by Linzi Whatnell via Facebook
Perhaps the reason why I was drawn to these images also had something to do with the naive appropriation of a commonly used motif within photography: the prostrate stranger, photographed unaware – examples of which have been featured recently here on insig.ht:
by Tod Papageorge
by Mark Powell
A motif that has also been covered by insig.ht contributors:
by Hin Chua
by Michael David Murphy
by Raoul Gatepin
Do you have other examples of well known photographers using this style? What are your thoughts and feelings about public use of photography via social networking? Do you know of any fine art or professional photographers who have harnessed the power of social networking to produce mass participation artworks based around simple typology? We’d be intrigued to hear from you.
