Everyday Pixels: Snapshots and Subjectivity Online

In the early 1980s Nan Goldin began a project that was to become known as The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a slide show of snapshot style images that documented her day to day life accompanied by a musical soundtrack. This work made use of the subjective honesty and emotive power of the humble snapshot recontextualised within the context of art. This subjective honesty is a characteristic of many ‘low’ or ‘amateur’ art forms. A combination of new technologies are currently being used by amateurs or non-artists who nevertheless create work that elicits the same response as works of art. This paper explores how the everyday snapshot aesthetic as used by Goldin and other artists is echoed in a number of online projects produced by these ‘non-artists’, on levels of subjective expression, social engagement and material value.