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Themesicon: navigation pathPhoto/Byteicon: navigation pathInstant Images
 
Celebration. Bilder und Texte zur Nacht (Götz, Reinald), 1999Rom, Blicke (Brinkmann, Rolf Dieter), 1979
 
 
 

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snapshot: What is of interest is less the image as a subject or even the individual image, rather more the act of the permanent reference to the present, the production of photographs. Repetitions and redundancies are always inherent in the performative act; moments are experienced anew every moment. In this respect, a critique of snapshot stereotypes has to miss the activity of taking snapshots, because it is not about originality—even contrary to claims made by the photographer him- or herself— but about repetitions; it is not about creativity, but about taking pictures of everything and everyone for everyone.

Goetz and Brinkmann have both combined their writing with their own and found photographs, e.g., Goetz in Celebration in 1999, and Brinkmann in Rom, Blicke in 1979. [21] In both cases, the state of temporarily being in another place, a journey so to speak—nights in a techno club or a stay at the Villa Massimo— are compressed into image/text montages in order to make a momentary feeling available: «That was a snapshot of my environment, but which leaves part of me for myself. Now, for example, the black coolness that is streaming into the room. I mean, one has to

 

cling to such things with all one’s senses. The rest is rubbish.» [22] It is essential that the combinations of images and text do not present the material in a documentary fashion, but in sampled form. This means that the ‹snapshots› are transformed and assembled to make a larger text, built in to a larger text; it is about processes of the reception and processing of momentariness, where literary work starts. The question now arises of how snapshots—insignificant image material; material that is spoken of disparagingly in aesthetic discourses—can be put into a kind of order.

«cameraphone canada car cat» (Flickr)

Of the large number of photo sites, Flickr, a photosharing Web site developed in 2004 by the Canadian software developer Ludicorp («We're building a better platform for real time interaction online») and taken over by Yahoo in March 2005, stands out in particular. In principle, Flickr is an electronic depot consisting of 3.5 million images. Flickr supplements individually run photoblogs with a range of helpful photo-management tools: Moblogging [23] allows

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