Artist of the Week: Jon Rafman

 Google Street View photographs by Jon Rafman

Jon Rafman, 4 Van Helomaweg, Wapserveen, Nederland 2011 

 Jon Rafman's Google Street View photographs are addictive. Having stumbled on his websitea while ago, I cannot get enough! Rafman's artwork is based on the media and the effects of the internet on the public.

In his street view series he trawled through google street view and took screen prints of the various scenes presented. There is a haunting nature to Rafman's photographs, making the images enticing. The fact that they are taken from everyday scenes means that we are able to engage with them even more.

If you click on this link for Rafman's website http://9-eyes.com/ you can see the images for yourself. The site is one continuous page which means that the further you go down the webpage the more photos there are. It definitely becomes addictive! 

His photographs include natural landscapes and members of the public in random and unusual situations. A lot of the photos of nature scenes look almost as if they have been taken from a top professional camera, not the google street view cam! As you can see with the images above (which happen to be my favourite) the colours are intense and mesmerizing. Absolutely stunning.

Jon Rafman, Songshan District, Taipei, Taiwan, 2009

Links out:

• http://9-eyes.com/
• http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/jon_rafman.htm