maintaining anonymity

Hand on heart, could you pick out Henri Cartier-Bresson or Robert Mapplethorpe from a lineup? I probably couldn't, but it would be easy to pick one of their photos from a pile. Jeff Koons too has an easily identifiable style (which is all over London at the moment), but when you see him photographed, he's looks gloriously ordinary. When looking at a body of work, for me it's mostly about the work itself, not about who created it. 

I have been spurred into writing this by the announcement yesterday that Flickr was adding a 'tagging' feature to it's offering, allowing users to pick out individuals in photos in a similar way to facebook. I was initially dismayed by this, but Flickr have smartly added an opt-out clause, allowing users to block others from tagging them. Facebook photos have become the proverbial pain in the ass when it comes to image tagging, and I've wasted a fair amount of time un-tagging myself from photos which i didn't like or didn't want others to see. You might think this is vain, and perhaps it is to some extent, but I don't think I'm alone. We all have highly prismatic personalities, and when a certain aspect is captured, we may want to keep that private. Google's own photo site Picasa now has the ability to automatically tag photos after it acquired a facial recognition company Neven Vision in 2007. This suits Google's myriad meta-data model well, but somewhat compromises anonymity.

Over a short space of time we have moved towards a social-centric media world which has been in large part down to the growth in social networks. The benefits are clear for certain channels, but I'm becoming concerned about the spread of a person-first, content second approach. I follow a few people on flickr who I have never met nor seen, and that doesn't matter to me, It's actually preferable sometimes. Not everything need to be a networking tool, and not everyone needs to be identified all the time. 

Comments

[BrazzaB]

you need to wear these

http://www.wishingfish.com/510667.html

then you can look like you're a member of the SAS.

http://www.greendevils.pl/g_d_l/scud_hunters/Bravo_Two_Zero.jpg