Penelope Umbrico

In 2006, artist Penelope Umbrico wondered what was the most photographed subject. Searching Flickr, an early online platform for sharing images, she found more than half a million photos of the sun at sunset. Umbrico began to exhibit walls of these pictures, printed at then ubiquitous commercial photo labs, as she questioned what it means to share images with an anonymous public. She was curious about what social-media images “tell us about our relationship to photography, technology, and each other.” After she installed walls of suns in different locations, Umbrico noticed that viewers began to photograph themselves in front of them, leading to the second part of the project, seen here.