Picture This – The Images Google’s Street View Cameras Were Not Meant To Capture

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Mr. Vicious

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From the crowd gathered moments after an accident in Mexico to the camper van blazing in a Brazilian street, they are a series of images that capture a few seconds of the lives of people across the globe. (Daily Mail By CHRIS SLACK)

Add in the group getting into a pick-up that appears to be carrying a body in the back and a lone woman posing naked at the edge of the sea they also show moments that those involved may wish had not been captured.

Complete with four Mexicans posing in animal masks, a young man sitting next to a lamppost and a man celebrating wildly as the car goes past they also capture some more bizarre moments.

And while these images may not appear to have anything in common due to their varied subject matter and mixture of locations they do… because they were all captured during Google’s mission to map the world for Street View.

Caught in a moment: A crowd gathers around the injured victim of an accident in a picture from Jon Rafman’s Nine Eyes of Google Street views, which collates images caught by the company’s cars as they mapped the world

Captured: A man from the Canadian city of Toronto hides behind a lamppost as this man in New York appears triumphant as the car passes

All the images here, and countless more, have been collated by Canadian artist Jon Rafman for a project called the Nine Eyes of Google.

Rafman named the project because of the nine cameras mounted on a single pole atop the vehicles that navigated the globe photographing the landscape.

Each car captured a frame every 10 to 20 metres, with every picture here captures just a split second as the vehicle went past.

So in one photo an elderly gentleman is shown twice in the same still because of the camera passing him as he walks down the street.

Cheeky: A woman appears to be naked at the edge of the sea at this Italian beach while a man in Ireland has an interesting way to welcome the car to this estate in Ireland

In an essay on his project, published on art blog Art Fag City, Rafman has written of how he attempts to seek out ‘postcard-perfect shots that capture “the decisive moment” in the same way a photojournalist responds to an event’.

He adds: ‘Within the panoramas, I can locate images of gritty urban life reminiscent of hard-boiled American street photography. Or, if I prefer, I can find images of rural Americana that recall photography during the depression.’

Rafman’s project first began in 2008 and it is currently on-going with regular updates.