A mood captured in time: digital blog galleries

By Philipp Laage Nov 24, 2011, 2:06 GMT

Berlin - A girl wearing a gas mask, an empty room and a rock star. A naked model smoking a cigarette, a face, a tattoo. The images are sometimes melancholic, disturbing, touching or sensuous. Collages such as these are not normally found in galleries but on the internet in blogs. It's easy to quickly view these recorded moments with a few clicks on your computer mouse.

Lion Bakmann has created one such world of impressions for himself. Bakmann's blog is called 'Muckibude' and is primarily populated with images of women. 'They're pictures that surprised me and represent my emotional state when I saw them for the first time,' says the 20-year-old student from the city of Chemnitz in eastern Germany. 'The pictures have been arranged according to my own idea of aesthetics and harmony.' Bakmann avoids images he considers too obscene or pornographic - even though he is fond of naked skin.

The images collected on 'Muckibude' are often timeless and forlorn. Caro Geisler's blog is called 'Life is a Bitch' and leaves a more unsettling impression: a tattooed baby, an evil clown, a person on an intravenous drip. 'I like absurd and provocative things. My pictures are dark and grim,' says the 24-year-old from Berlin.

The pictures have been found online or in art and graphic books and were chosen according to Geisler's 'current circumstances.' Geisler says her blog is not intended to express any particular meaning. It's goal is to inspire with images that speak for themselves without need for explanation.

'My blog is a collecting point for things that inspire me,' says Lion Bakmann. In most cases he's inspired by women. 'But music, culture, sport, tattoos and food also interest me. Everything that has something to do with quality of life.'

Bakmann and Geisler represent the burgeoning trend of digital image collages. The micro-blogging platform Tumblr allows users to quickly design a blog by incorporating text, photos, quotes, links, music files and videos. Tumblr says it has over 33 million separate blogs on its servers but cannot say how many of them are of an artistic nature.

Internet sociologist Stephan Humer says the creation of online collages is an expression of a remix culture. Humer describes such blogs as mosaics that are created according to a certain aesthetic and rely on images to generate impressions.

'They have a liberating quality. Visitors to the remix blogs can interpret what they find in many ways. The guiding principle is: if I like it, it's good. That's what they're aiming for,' Humer says.

When one blogger references something another blogger has discovered it's like an agreement of understanding. It's an expression of a common perception of the world and its people.

Humer interprets the blogs as a form of identity creation. At the very minimum the blogs are an attempt to live out a form of identity. 'However, it's rarely a clearly thought-out strategy. It happens unconsciously,' he says. Lion Bakmann describes the process as this: 'It's like a small oasis for me. Just like a diary, I can reflect my present emotional frame of mind.'

Reproducing photos online in a blog, however, comes with certain responsibilities as bloggers cannot flout copyright laws. The process of reproducing someone else's image is a hotly debated topic in the blogger world. Many believe current copyright laws are out of date and need to be replaced with legislation that reflects the world of media as it is today.

Germany is one country that is at least considering an overhaul: in July a parliamentary committee concluded that legalising online remix and mash-up sites was worth considering.