Penelope Umbrico

“Everyone’s Photos Any License” uses the photo-sharing website Flickr to explore how the full moon is photographed and shared through various imaging technologies. Focusing on a purportedly rarified photographic practice (taking a clear photograph of the full moon requires expensive specialized photographic equipment), I searched Flickr for “full moon” and was surprised to find 1,146,034 nearly identical, technically proficient images, most with the “All Rights Reserved” license. Seen individually any one of these images is impressive. Seen as a group, however, they seem to cancel each other out. “Everyone’s Photos Any License” seeks to address the shifts in meaning and value that occur when the individual subjective experience of witnessing and photographing is revealed as a collective practice, seen recontextualized in its entirety.