PUBLIC HIDING

Usually the purpose of installing Webcams is to share information with the world, be it by showing the beauty of a place, to inform drivers about traffic situations, for surveillance purposes etc.

Recently, however, it can be observed that there are pictures that hide certain «sensitive» areas. Houses, facilities or other spaces are covered with bars, coarse pixels or soft focus, in order to make these areas unidentifiable. Individuals as well as companies or administrations have filed complaints with Webcam operators, demanding that they mask sensitive spots.

Now you might say that the more Webcams there are, the more of world is shown. Yet, paradoxically, at the same time, more and more is being hidden.

Thus, new types of hybrid images emerge: pictures combining the public interest in complete visibility with the individual, commercial or institutional right to privacy.

This ultimately leads to the question: Where does the image end and where do the intrusions into our private lives begin?

The series consists of image pairs, with the left image showing the image photographed by the netcam and the right image showing only the covered areas.

I removed the landscapes and sceneries from the pictures here.

The picture on the right shows the bars, pixels and blurs, those areas that are classified for different reasons, isolated on a white background. From these pictures, so to speak, an architecture of the private, the secret, the hidden evolves.

A new kind of photography becomes visible, a photography of the strangely legal with its own logic and premise, which is calculated live into the picture and pushes itself before our eyes.