Thomas Hoepker, Young People on the Brooklyn Waterfront on September 11, 2001 (Magnum)
It means everything.
It means nothing.
Like every photograph ever taken, it means exactly what you think it means.
Simple, right?
Apparently not. (Look here; and here; and here; and here; and here; and here; and here.)
George LeChat, George LeChat, 2006
I must be some kind of recluse.
No Facebook. No Twitter. No Tumblr. No Flickr. No nothing at all. (Except this blog, which is obviously not what you'd call social.)
I've been reading a lot lately about social media and art. What's the connection? Branding, mainly, and the many opportunities to enhance your status as an artist by doing so.
I just don't care. In fact, I really dislike the whole thing.
What kind of person actually wants to be a follower? (And who, for that matter, would want followers like that?)
Robert Bechtle, Alameda Gran Torino, 1974
Some people just don't like skeuomorphs.
I recently exchanged a couple of emails with Joerg Colberg on that subject. Colberg dislikes online photobooks that look like books. “I get it,” he says, “it’s a book. But my computer screen doesn’t have pages, and I don’t need to see fake pages being turned.”
I don’t entirely disagree. I can’t stand the iCal app in Lion, for example, with that faux leather border. Or the tacky varnished plywood bookshelves in iBooks.
But I don’t mind the page-turning animation in iBooks. And I don’t mind the page-turning animation on Issuu, which is what prompted my conversation with Colberg in the first place. (I’ve published a photobook on Issuu. It's not perfect, but I like it okay.)
I don't think page-turning animation qualifies as a skeuomorph anyway. For one thing, it’s more than merely ornamental. How, otherwise, would you present a photobook with pictures on facing pages? You’ve got to advance the pages. Some kind of mechanism is required, whether it's pages that slide or pages that fade or pages that turn.
Still, I understand the objection to it. It’s just not an authentic form of digital presentation. But I'm not sure how to do it better.
Any ideas? (You can send me an email here.)
