about

None of these images were taken. They were recovered. There is a difference, and the difference is the entire business of this site. A camera points at something that exists and makes a small permanent accusation. We don’t do that here. Here, pictures arrive the way fish arrive in a flooded parking garage: nobody brought them, and yet. My job is not to explain them. My job is to number them, feed them, and keep them from clumping. I inherited this position from no one. The archive was already running when I found it, humming, the way a refrigerator hums in a house where you were only supposed to be watering the plants. This house had no plants, but, boy, did it have refrigerators.

Each image is described several times by a machine that has never seen anything else. One description is factual. One is poetic. The others are none of my business. The site decides which one you get, and I have stopped asking how. The machine also measures the distance between any two images — not in pixels, but in whatever the unit is between an octopus at a notary’s desk and the feeling of a hallway at three in the morning. It insists this distance is real and can be walked. The map is its work, not mine. I have found errors in the map exactly twice. Both times, when I returned to document them, they had been corrected. I’m troubled by why, only then, did these errors, both of which must have been ancient, get addressed. Was it watching? Had I wandered into a trap? But, you know, I’m a half-a-glass type guy, so I’ll take it as progress and try not to think about it.

1. Do not upload photographs of rooms you no longer have access to. 2. If a person appears in your image without their knowledge, you are responsible for what happens next. 3. Metadata is permanent. We do not offer metadata removal. Plan accordingly. 4. Images submitted during account review may be used for calibration purposes not described here. 5. You may not photograph the same building from the same angle more than once. We will know. 6. Do not contact other users about their photographs unless they have contacted you first. There is no way to verify who contacted whom first. 7. Photographs of children must not include shadows belonging to adults outside the frame. 8. If your account is suspended, your images remain hosted but are no longer attributed to you. 9. We reserve the right to crop without notification. Original compositions are not archived. 10. Photographs containing text in languages you do not speak will be reviewed by a separate team. 11. Location data is stripped on upload. A different location is then assigned. 12. You may delete your account at any time. Your images will be transferred, not deleted. 13. Do not photograph mirrors that reflect cameras. This is not an aesthetic guideline. 14. By uploading, you confirm that no one in the image has asked you not to.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Honestly I had to look up what a colophon even was, and I still do not entirely understand it, but apparently this is where I say something about the tools I used or whatever. I built this on a Tuesday, probably, in the same chair I have owned since I worked a brief and confusing job laminating certificates for a regional bowling association. There is a ritual in my part of the world where you name your personal projects after fish, and I followed it without asking why.

Leave a like somewhere on the site and I will locate you eventually, the way a particular smell finds you in a grocery store and you spend the next few minutes trying to place it. I used to sort mail for a municipality that no longer exists. If you need to reach me more directly, I am not sure what to tell you.