Today we’re looking at two small books by the French publisher Jean-Boîte, each of which began as a project developed on the Internet.
Kim Jong Il Looking at Things is a compilation of the former North Korean leader photographed while looking at things: tomatoes, computers, roads, vegetables, bags. In each image, an unsmiling official presents something for Kim Jong Il’s inspection. From behind a pair of dark futuristic glasses, his eyes validate the objects, their essence and their existence. Originally collected by Joâo Rocha, a member of an advertising agency in Lisbon, these allegedly edificatory photographs become laughable when presented in a serial form, which serves as a silent and skeptical commentary.
The Nine Eyes of Google Street View brings together images assembled by Jon Rafman over the past three years as part of an eponymous project. Rafman explores the world without ever moving, using Google Street View. We sometimes see the outlines Google arrows running across images of mercenaries in Easter Europe, escaped convicts on American backroads, tigers unleashed in a parking lot, fires, ghosts, prostitutes, horsing rushing along roads—are we in Ireland?—and an elk trotting towards the sea. Everything is real. Sometimes the beauty is staggering. And everything comes from the panoptic, global eye of Google Street View, which like Diane Arbus before it, could respond to charges of voyeurism with the defense: “I show what would otherwise not be seen.”
Antoine Soubrier
Kim Jong Il Looking at Things – João Rocha et Marco Bohr
&
The Nine Eyes of Google Street View – Jon Rafman
167 x 240 mm
Coll. « FOLLOW ME, Collecting Images Today »
180 pages.
24 & 27 €
