Near Bliss + On Bliss

Read it here, on speculor.org

Near bliss is an ongoing collection of found images that resemble the famous photograph “Bliss”, taken by Charles O’Rear in 1996 and used as Windows XP’s default wallpaper.
The picture has become ubiquitous and almost synonymous with the beginning of the digital age, linking a technological product with a representation of nature. Despite its apparent simplicity, it is designed to be soothing and comforting, and it produces both a sense of calm and, today, of nostalgia. These pictures aren’t quite bliss and don’t produce the same feeling, but they hark back to them – revealing, in the repetition and in the space that’s missing, the emotional mechanics at work in the original.

On bliss tells the story of the photograph thought to be the most viewed picture in history. Merging layers of theoretical, poetic, and documentary storytelling, the text unfolds the picture’s history and significance. What it promised us is nothing less than bliss. Has it delivered ?

See & add to the collection on are.na.

Thank you to Théo Casciani & Noé Gross for the invitation to publish on speculor.org., and to Théodora Jacobs for the pagesetting and webdesign.