Penelope Umbrico and Flickr: From Niépce to the Moon and Back

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Ressource 1Download: DIETSCHY_Umbrico_Photographies_2022.pdf (15167.60 [Ko])
State: Public
Version: Final published version
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Serval ID
serval:BIB_90CDF5DFDC9C
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Penelope Umbrico and Flickr: From Niépce to the Moon and Back
Journal
Photographies
Author(s)
Dietschy Nathalie
ISSN
1754-0763 (print)
1754-0771 (electronic)
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2022
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
15
Number
2
Pages
265-287
Language
english
Abstract
Penelope Umbrico’s series entitled Everyone’s Photos Any License (2015-) gathers photographs of the full moon that she selected from among the millions of similar images of the theme on the image-sharing website Flickr. In this paper, I study Umbrico’s gesture, drawing from the flow of online digital images to give shape to often monumental photographic installations, using photographs of the moon taken by others. Her project is inscribed in an image ecology that defends a recycling approach in the context of the overwhelming available images online. I argue that if Umbrico’s series takes part in contemporary practices, it also refers to the history of photography and its tight links with astronomy. Drawing on the history of the photographs of the moon in the nineteenth century to the abundance of digital photographs today, I attempt to show that Umbrico’s series both thematizes the technical challenges of photographing the moon and the ongoing fascination it evokes, in a time of space tourism projects. I argue that the artist’s act of borrowing people’s images of the moon mirrors our possessive relationship with images in the digital age and thus questions the notions of authorship and of uniqueness in today’s flow of images.
Open Access
Yes
Create date
05/11/2021 15:42
Last modification date
13/10/2022 7:11
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