a ha ha

This is a photograph taken at a music festival I went to in February 2010 called “Campus A Low Hum” (CALH for short).

There are a few strange things about this photograph popping up in my facebook photostream. 1. I have no idea who took this picture - someone called Bella Scott apparently. 2. I have no idea who tagged me in it. 3. I don’t know any of the people who have been tagged in it or who have commented on it.

It’s just weird seeing as the only person who I actually know in the picture is the tie-dye clad young man I am talking to. It may just be because we are the only people I recognise that my eye is drawn to us when I look at the picture but I feel compositionally my friend (his name is James) and I are privileged visually in this photo - we are well lit and recognisable and seem to be if not the focus then the most in focus in the picture. I just thought it was funny considering how removed I feel from the context of the person who took this photograph, uploaded it and all the people who commented on it. It’s also curious how in the comments they also say how they cant recognise that many people so they just start tagging “people who look like people.” And further down Matt Scheurich exclaims “I DIDN’T EVEN GO TO CAMP!”

This is strange behaviour I thought especially when Kat Cox who has (I assume) tagged Zach Penman and Alyona Medelyan as look-alikes of people in the picture comments “Look at Zach and Alyona hanging out together!” To which Zach Penman says “This scares me a little” and Alyona Medelyan comments “Hahaha, thanks Kat. At least we are still hanging out all together virtually!” Its so weird - what about the actual people in the picture who Zach and Alyona have been tagged as? Do they even know they are in this picture?

I just thought this weird little Facebook photo situation was quite relevant to our Digital Identities project in the sense that you didn’t even have to be there to be part of it. The photo has kind of become something else, like a strange little “Where’s Wally” game as Bella Scott comments. It is no longer a photographic record of people at a music festival. It is a Facebook novelty for people who weren’t even necessarily present in the photograph.

It’s so interesting to see the potential for images online to be something completely different from what we had traditionally thought a photograph could be.