Justus Gelberg presents the world seen through live webcams

Live webcams seem to be part of internet history that are considered somewhat archaic, a fascinating trend of the recent past. When Justus Gelberg was presented with a brief by his tutor Eike König to create a project that made a new work every day for 100 days (inspired by Michael Bierut’s concept), he turned his attention to the world through a network of lenses that he did not install or manage. The results were compiled into a book that is a visual diary of the world from 24 April to 1 August 2015, where each image is date and time stamped alongside the location of the camera. “Gelberg did not intend to create a series showing some sort of global overview of all public live webcams,” says the publication. “Gelberg’s work is the reflection of a very personal perspective. The locations shown act mostly as places of longing, like most things happening within the frame of the live cams concern personal preferences or interests.”

We see inside strip clubs, courts, museums and waterparks. Sometimes the images portray mundane activity and at other times we see more incongruous stills such palm trees against a blue sky on Mulberry Street, New York. Presented in low resolution, as the images were found, the book seeks to address the superficial, short term attention that webcams receive and reproduces each still with more brilliance, quality and durability.