Virginia Heffernan in the Times Sunday Magazine writes about emerging talents on Flickr, and how the medium – specifically the social aspect – has shaped the work of artists.
Her description is provocative, especially the notion that Flickr as a whole may constitute a new medium. There are elements of performance (interacting with the audience via comments), the genre of heavily digitally-processed images, with the images as a commonplace. The images themselves confidently step away from traditional notions of photographs (and truth) and into a more participatory space.
We’re still in the early stages of weaving digital tools into our social lives, but we’ve come a long way from just eight years ago and the fears expressed in Bowling Alone, where everyone online would be isolated in “interest enclaves”. Chalk me up as an optimist.