The mistake

These two pictures I pulled out directly from Facebook. The first one depicts a group of school girls and the second one some of the same school girls twenty years later.

When the first photograph was taken the film of the previous photograph taken got stuck on the film of this picture resulting in the unintentional mixing of both. We see here one of the school girls that is sitting to the left of the picture also standing to the right.

The second picture was taken with a digital camera and the movement of the hand makes the picture seem blurred and even double.

These two images have one thing in common: the mistake. Sturken and Cartwright write that even the settings of cameras meant to take decisions out of the normal user's concern, have a certain 'ideology' for it is based on pre-conceived ideas that a picture must be clear and neat.

What I find interesting about these two pictures is the way they are broadcasted to the world in a place like Facebook, even though they are 'mistakes'. The user was unable to 'properly' use the camera the way it was preset to be used and yet they are shown like any other picture. It seems that our internet culture has completely erased the boundaries between what is wanted and what is unwanted in images.