“Doesn’t anyone notice? Doesn’t anyone complain?” I’m often asked these questions when people see my photos of passengers. I understand them, to some extent. Even though the spaces where we photograph are public, the moments are intimate. In the madness of urban overcrowding, we seek intimacy in the anonymity of the crowd. Observing that space seems unsettling to those who consider it private. It is assumed that other passengers are not interested in their companions either, that everyone shares the unspoken rule of non-existence within the same space… Perhaps it is more of a shared non-perception, a self-imposed blindness. If we didn’t carry cameras but looked with the same presence that this book has when looking through our eyes, we would likely face the same issue—a transgression. Someone might smile, yes… but they would be the exception.
Passengers Vol. III concludes the trilogy with photographs taken between 2013 and 2015. The book features 42 images by 12 authors, selected from an initial pool of 7,515 images by 71 photographers. The first selection round took over a year. Editors could vote to accept an image as part of the new book through an individual online process. After so much selection work, we weren’t sure if we could create another book with a cohesive thread… until we saw the images chosen by the four editors together. It was a surprise to find coherence among those seven thousand photos and between the four of us. The second, third, and fourth rounds of editing were done in person, working with around 300 printed photographs.
Transmedia participative project: app, book collection, video and exhibition.
Traces is a collective project that provides a chance to experience a dérive [literally: “drifting”, a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances] and verify its capacity to document urban space from different perspectives while using a common methodology and creating a psychogeographical map of Barcelona.
Passengers is a website as well as a series of street photography books about the passengers who use public transport.
The project was developed as a web participatory concept. All of the images were captured with mobile devices and
published on Instagram. The website gives a real time look at participation while the books are a visual contemplation
about public transport passengers, mobile device aesthetics and street photography.
Participative Processes on the Web: Making of Passengers 2012
We thought it would be interesting to explain how this book was developed. Barcelona Photobloggers have been producing
participative web projects since 2006, some of them in collaboration with important cultural entities of Barcelona city.
We’ve often noticed interest in our approach to work and organization.
In writings, two types of participative processes are distinguished. Some call them participatory art and some –
participatory projects. We make the same distinction, but we call them participatory and collaborative processes.
Participants capture, edit and publish their pictures using their phones and they are instantly displayed in the
exhibition (inreal-time) emphasizing the immediacy aspect.
The exhibition will be simultaneously held in different cities around the world, in very diverse and distant locations,
making the exhibition ubiquitous.
Although iPhoneography might seem to be about a group of addicted fans and technobuffs who cannot stop using their
mobile phone, it is in reality the continuation of a trend that began with the advent of the Kodak Brownie in February
1900 and has been developing since then.
The Kodak Brownie is recognised as the beginning of photography for the masses and with it was born the term “snapshot”:
a photograph taken quickly without thinking, without any artistic or documentary intent, usually blurry, badly framed
and in which the subject is usually a scene from everyday life, such as birthdays, sunsets, pets or travel.
Passengers is a street photography project, in both web and book series form, about anonymous public transport
passengers. It’s designed as a participative online project. All the images are captured by mobile devices and published
on Instagram. The site is a “real-time view” of the participation process. The book is a visual meditation on public
transport passengers and the aesthetics of street photography using mobile devices.
Project “Arrinconado” (Cornered) starts a new era for Barcelona Photobloggers. The objective was to create a
collaborative project with a horizontal organization in which all of the members would have an opportunity to
participate in every aspect of creation, from definition to production, and which would lead to a work authored by the
group and not by a gathering of various authors in the same space.
El programa Infodia de Barcelona Televisió ha emès un petit reportatge sobre l’exposició “Al Detall” organitzada per Barcelona Photobloggers i Maremagnum. Moltes gràcies!
El programa Hola Barcelona de Barcelona Televisió ha emès un reportatge sobre l’exposició “elements” organitzada per Barcelona Photobloggers i Maremagnum. Moltes gràcies!
In recent years, the phenomenon of photoblogs, an extension of the blog culture where photography is the center of attention, has been acquiring adepts on the internet. Around this phenomenon, online communities in various cities around the world, Barcelona among them, have sprung up as a meeting place for the photobloggers.
Barcelona Photobloggers come out of the online world to present their first collective exhibition entitled
“De la red a la pared” on October 19 at 20:30. A total of 22 photobloggers from Barcelona area will exhibit more than 300 photographs at the
Fotonauta gallery until November 9.
December 7, 2019
