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SALT LAKE CITY — As individuals we share a unique, but similar, view of the world. We take in the same visual cues, but it’s how we process them that often makes us different.
From photography to jokes, someone out there has likely been there before, or so a video entitled “Vemödalen” by John Koenig is attempting to tell.
Vemödalen, Koenig writes, is the “frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.” Koenig then narrates as 465 photos taken independently by different photographers is shown in similar, but different situations.
“Each of us is different, with some new angle on the world,” Koenig says. “But what does it mean if the lives we’re busy shaping by hand all end up looking the same, easily replaced by a thousand identical others.
“It should be a comfort that we’re not so different, that our perspectives so neatly align, that these same images keep showing up again and again,” Koenig continues. “It’s all right if we tell the same jokes we’ve all heard before. It’s all right if we keep remaking the same movies. It’s all right if we keep saying the same phrases to each other as if they had never been said before. The powerful play goes on and you will contribute a verse.”
Whatever your take on Koenig’s explanation on perspective and the “fear that everything has already been done,” it’s an interesting view to the same, but different world we all live in.
