Ghosts of Google

This series first debuted in 2019. Continuing the portraiture theme of the work, it metaphorically reflects contemporary life situations, with the constant element being a sense of estrangement.

The images in the series are captured using Google Street View as the source material, with screenshots serving as the photographic method. The completed works in the series include: *Maps Remember* (2022), *Ghosts of Google* (2021), *Anonymous* (2020), and the *That People Series*.

The relationship between machines and humans can be reflected in the production of images across different eras. The advent of photography was closely tied to the creation of portraits. Early portrait photography, with its long exposure times, imbued subjects with what Walter Benjamin referred to as the "aura." At that time, mechanical technology served humanity, capturing the dignity and solemnity of individuals through the extended process of photography.

In today's technologically advanced world, the form and function of photography have become increasingly complex, potentially transforming it into a tool of what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe as the "Empire Machine" in their book Empire. In Google Earth’s real-time browsing, the camera does not focus on any individual but merely passes through and records everything. Under this overwhelming surveillance, human subjects are often represented in fragmented, incomplete, displaced, or blurred images.

In the work Ghosts of Google, the blurred faces of people, which might intuitively evoke emotional responses in traditional viewing, are here the result of Google's privacy regulations, where AI systems automatically detect and obscure faces. These anonymous figures, stripped of their identified status, are precisely located within the coordinates calibrated by satellite systems and the internet. Can these images be considered a form of "portrait" reflecting contemporary human existence?