Is wandering a vast digital space like wandering the streets? Is capturing one of the infinite street corners and angles comparable to “traditional” photography? There will always be debate about the “authenticity” of Google Street View sourced artwork, but the images in Doug Rickard’s A New American Picture series, captured in poverty-stricken fringes of New Orleans, Detroit, and Baltimore, are stunning. Shot off the screen, the impressionistic scenes in these archival pigment prints look like carefully-composed film stills, not one of millions of photos shot by a sterile camera atop a van.
As Rickard, who also happens to run two of our favorite photography blogs, ASX and These Americans, explained to us over email, he spent thousands of hours virtually exploring the country and taking pictures of what he discovered on Street View; the resulting body of work is made up from about of 80 of these voyeuristic shots. Click through to check it out now in our slideshow.
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #29.942566, New Orleans, LA. 2008, 2009
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #33.665001, Atlanta, GA. 2009, 2010
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #34.546147, Helena-West Helena, AR. 2008, 2010
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #35.111126, Memphis, TN. 2009, 2010
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #39.259736, Baltimore, MD. 2008, 2011
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #39.777110, Camden, NJ. 2009, 2009
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #42.418064, Detroit, MI. 2009, 2010
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #83.016417, Detroit, MI. 2009, 2010
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #82.948842, Detroit, MI. 2009, 2010
Image credit: Doug Rickard. #82.948842, Detroit, MI. 2009, 2010