Reenactments
2009

Though it presents itself as a navigable present, Google Street View is in fact a disjointed record of our recent past– specifically, the moment in which it drove past the place it recorded. I reenacted those moments, and in the process I and my photographers learned the hard way that because of the angle of the Google Street View camera (atop a car) and because of the distorting effects of its lens, it is absolutely impossible to take a picture that matches Street View. (This is to say nothing of the time, erosion, and growth that had taken place since the photo was taken.) Sides of buildings were newly visible while parts of sidewalks had disappeared, the horizon had moved, and vanishing points had morphed to an unnerving degree.

Read an essay in Art Practical that considers this project alongside Paolo Cirio's "Street Ghosts."