Portfolio: Penelope Umbrico
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.What do people take photos of? It's a question that has preoccupied the American photographer Penelope Umbrico for the past five years, and her project "Suns" is the luminous result.
"I was looking at the online photo-sharing community Flickr five years ago and I was interested in what was the most photographed subject on the site," she explains. In 2006, more than 500,000 images had been uploaded and tagged with the keyword "sunset". "It seemed amazing to me, as there's only one sun, yet it existed here in so many variations."
The resulting series of collages digitally stitched together by Umbrico (one of which is shown here) is a constantly evolving tableau featuring more than 2,500 images of the sun, culled from the near-nine million amateur shots out there.
"The internet is said to be a place where we can assert our individuality," she muses, "but if you look around online, it does the opposite: it erases you as an individual as, on one level at least, we're all doing the same thing."
'Penelope Umbrico (Photographs)' is out now, published by Aperture, priced £40. For more: penelopeumbrico.net
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments