A while back, The Constant Siege linked to an article by Virginia Heffernan about some of flickr’s most popular photographers - Rebekka Guoleifsdottir and Merkley???. Sometimes, hardcore and talented flickrtographers end up frowning on one or both of these artists’ work; I know almost nothing about how a camera works, but I think some of the resentment is aimed at the gimmickry and photoshopping that makes those “flickr photos” so popular. It’s funny how no matter how independent our communities are, we all end up playing favorites eventually.
(today’s dog park thought: think about how much office-politics bullshit people deal with in one day. how much time and money is wasted on interpersonal drama? now imagine working at the white house.)
I think a little bit of snobbery in any passion or job is necessary to form your own opinions. Our creative preferences reflect parts of our personalities that are generally hard to find. But something strange happens to people, especially creative people, after a certain information threshold, and it’s something I’ve seen in nearly every working artist in every kind of art. No matter how obnoxious or uninformed or ill-planned or poorly executed a piece of creative work is, they can still see the brilliance, or the gift, or the personality of the creator in the actual work. Like him or not, Merkley???’s a clever artist. He has the guts to maintain that rambling, bearded persona - which may be annoying, but is not an easy task - and say stupid, completely true things like “We artists live in the fuck-you-est of times.”
The medium shaping the message is becoming more microcosmic every time another start-up explodes on the internet. The idea that flickr’s online culture is actually making new kinds of photographic styles is fascinating because it goes so far beyond tricks and flickr, and you get to watch it happen any time you want.
(today’s other dog park thought: how pretty much the same phenomenon - virtual democracy, or whatever the cool kids call it - is putting old-money business sharks out of the water and forcing semi-flexible sharks into a customer’s world that demands at least the facade of demand-driven products and services. it’s fun to watch bad customer service and crappy products get destroyed by the web.)
When a site like flickr introduces you to photographers like Fubuki, it gets hard to snob up. His tricks: Startling images + good stories, not so easy to shine up in photoshop. Sometimes not so easy to take in, either.
And on the opposite side of the flickr style, there’s Rakka. She started Suspect and Fugitive as its own art/blog project, but it bleeds over into its own little universe on flickr. She says it’s “a year long project where i make an item a day out of suspect (questionable) and fugitive (non archival) materials.” Some of these daily projects take a lot of time and go deep into the pop culture vaults, where the good shit is (Donna Hayword(s), Jam Master Jay, Cumin League, Saran Wrasputin). This kind of art project can only happen on the internet, and maybe really only reach people who enjoy Rakka’s dedication on flickr. Things like this make the internet suck less, one pony trick at a time.
(p.s. it’s PRINCESS BRIDE week at Suspect and Fugitive.)