Jon Rafman has a fascinating web project that puts a real eyeball on Google’s mapping of our private lives in the public streets by providing, as a subset of his collection — what appear to be hookers — working from curbs around the world. The overall project is called — “Google Street Views” — and I was particularly fascinated by the amount of possible “hookers” recorded by Google in Jon’s folio. Let’s take a look at some of the street captures and see what you think.
Women alone on desolate roads creates a striking, if foreboding, image in the eye. Finding shade provides a connective context:
Closer views reveal the expectation of commerce for physical content. The faces were blurred by Jon — but you can still sense the stinging resentment in their expressions.
Some of the images are coy and innately suggestive of longing and lost hope.
Other images bespeak moments caught in the crevasse between youth and impending adulthood.
Lingerie in public is never a good look — unless, of course, that’s your fleshy point.
Corners mean big business — and big busts — if you’re lucky and stupid.
Is this the end result of a night gone bad — or is this evidence of a day long departed?
Be sure to take a look at Jon Rafman’s entire collection of Google Street Views. I’ve only cherry-picked for you here those that images suggest the possibility of street hooking, but if you view the entire site, you’ll see accidents, crime, and human tragedy the world over.
The effort of this Street Views project is definitely a worthy one because it gives us some sort of hardscrabble context to the rather mundane effort of our day-to-day existence.
Scary site, David — suppose that’s the point. I feel sad for the women but that is the path they have chosen to take — or feel they have been forced to take.
It is sad, Gordon. Some of the women may be pressed into the streets by the men in their lives. I’m sure it’s a rather hopeless existence.
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