Michiko Tsuda

A still camera is found in the woods with a memory card full of pictures of persons unknown. By deduction, it would seem that these people frequent the city of Grenoble in France. So an investigation is conducted to try and trace them, from Japan, by exploring the Grenoble area with the Google Street View. The discovered photographs are of a family with two small children that regularly meets up with the same group of friends. The investigation in Street View enabled certain places present in the pictures to be accurately identified, for the concert, the holidays or the baker's shop. The photographs are combined with screen captures taken in Street View in function of their similarities and closeness: a girl in black is celebrating on her birthday, a girl in black in a parking lot, a party in a suburban home, a swimming pool in a suburban home. The pictures are grouped by theme in family albums.
This particular format, intended for storing family memories, ensures a space and time continuity between the photographs and the screen captures; the images brought together in this way seem to come from a single source.
The representation model for family photographs dissolves the all-knowing proposition of Street View; the people and places taken in Street View melt into the continuous thread of family pictures and the photograph album.

Please refer to Project documentation >