When you take a picture, a moment becomes a memory. The memory becomes matter. Publishing photos, through services like Flickr, has added a new dimension to the photographic process for many people. Publishing a picture on the web becomes an intentional part of the shooting process. By pressing the button, people don’t just capture an image of their lives, a memory, but also give their visual opinion on a place or an object that will be added to the extensive collection of visual fragments of individual lives, already published on the web. For the same object / event, there will be several pictures that potentially represent the photographer’s emotions. This added dimension, the intention to share a photo, is the concept behind the work Buttons, by the German artist Sascha Pohflepp. It’s a device which looks very much like a camera, but with no optical parts. Pressing the shutter button does not shoot any picture. The button click only stores the current time, and begins a search of photos published at that same moment. The image that appears on the screen a few minutes later was taken by someone else at the same time. Half of the image belongs to the person who pressed the button and still remembers that moment, the other half to the person who actually took the picture. Separated from the subject, time is captured and becomes the cause of a more intimate sharing.

Chiara Ciociola