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Why Flickr Commons is Important to Me
Daily Ink
Stored in: In Situ
Posted On: December 24 2008
By: Bryan Partington
Photo © George
I think that we live today in a culture that discards the past. A disposable culture. Particularly online, where information that is not "in the moment" is undervalued, and the focus is is constantly on the now. Of course, I don't mean to be pessimistic about this, because in this process we are all inadvertently creating a rich history of ourselves and our time.
We don't often take photographs "for history", and yet the potential to record history is one of the most compelling attributes of photography.
George Oates once put it this way, before she began work on The Commons:
The bigger Flickr gets, the more I'm seeing it as a huge historical corpus of our lives. Particularly interesting to me is the visible history of the mundane on a massive scale - dude on couch with mates, bee up close, the back fence, my new pants, etc. I think the thing I like most is that I can see so much of the world: both from an individual's perspective and through the lovely, incidental collections that "just happen" through things like tags and time.
What fascinates me about The Commons is that it is a "huge historical corpus" of an earlier time. It is a way to understand the past in a broad, personal way. It is not about viewing the past through a handful of "great" "famous" photographs, but to understand the past through that "visible history of the mundane" .. every day depicted through the the lens of the everyday.
The world as it is, is currently submerged in economic turmoil, war, and continued struggle for civil rights. We are told by our leaders to look to the past and understand how we've overcome these struggles, to help us through our current problems. The Commons is, in my mind, a tremendous means for doing so.
The Commons represents a very broad view of history that has been very difficult to access in the past. The potential volume of the collection is staggering but it is the diverse nature or the imagery that appeals most to me, and how sometimes the more mundane images can serve to connect this history to our own lives, in all our contemporary struggles and joys.
1 comments on this Ink
On December 24, 2008, Joan Hill said ...
I almost wrote about the Commons here last week. I am enamored with and oh-so-curious about all of the amazing Commons work to be found here. They are a real gift to us all.
Otherwise, in In Situ:
- Previously: Fixing the Flickr API with Flags
Utata Ink is a daily publication edited by Bryan Partington (striatic). Photos used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and obtained via the flickr API unless otherwise noted. To make a contribution to Ink, please visit Ink Me.
