Image: Penelope Umbrico, 5,537,594 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 5/30/09 – for BAM(detail). Courtesy of the artist and LMAK Projects.
Penelope Umbrico is an artist best known for appropriating images found using search engines and picture sharing websites. Her project "Suns from Flickr " started in 2006 when she found 541,795 pictures of sunsets searching the word “sunset” on the photo-sharing web site Flickr while looking for the most photographed subject (which the sunset turned out to be). She took just the suns from these pictures and made snapshot prints of them. For each installation, the title reflects the number of hits she gets searching "sunset" on Flickr at the time.
And since this number only lasts an instant, its recording is analogous to the act of photographing the sunset itself. Umbrico says: “I think it's peculiar that the sun, the quintessential life giver, constant in our lives, symbol of enlightenment, spirituality, eternity, all things unreachable and ephemeral, omnipotent provider of optimism and vitamin D… and so ubiquitously photographed, is now subsumed to the internet, the most virtual of spaces equally infinite but within a closed electrical circuit.”
And since this number only lasts an instant, its recording is analogous to the act of photographing the sunset itself. Umbrico says: “I think it's peculiar that the sun, the quintessential life giver, constant in our lives, symbol of enlightenment, spirituality, eternity, all things unreachable and ephemeral, omnipotent provider of optimism and vitamin D… and so ubiquitously photographed, is now subsumed to the internet, the most virtual of spaces equally infinite but within a closed electrical circuit.”
In her work, Umbrico explores the connection between the virtual and the natural, the private and the public, the distinctive and the superfluous.
Her work has recently been featured in the New York Times Magazine, on the cover and inside spreads accompanying "Ghosts In the Machine", on January 9, 2011. Her first monograph, "Penelope Umbrico (photographs)", will be published in the spring of 2011 by Aperture.
Her work has recently been featured in the New York Times Magazine, on the cover and inside spreads accompanying "Ghosts In the Machine", on January 9, 2011. Her first monograph, "Penelope Umbrico (photographs)", will be published in the spring of 2011 by Aperture.
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