CARINE KRECKÉ
Unincorporated
Narrative essay on Google Street View
“The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.”
Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977
Whiteclay, Nebraska
Jacob Street / NE 87, Whiteclay, Nebraska, USA
GOOGLE STREET VIEW 2013 © GOOGLE Inc., 2013
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Whiteclay is a small settlement at the border between South Dakota and Nebraska. The tiny town is crossed by one single asphalt road, the NE-87. Population is 10, as of the latest population census (2010). The legal or administrative status of Whitelcay is 'unincorporated.' In the United States, this typically characterizes remote, outlying, sparsely populated or uninhabited areas. For ages, this would be the place where people come for alcohol. The selling and consumption of alcohol has always been prohibited on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, which is only a few miles away. The main village of the reservation is within walking distance. Selling booze has become a lucrative business model for liquor shop owners in Whiteclay, where drinking is allowed. People would come here and never leave. They'd become homeless, and literally drink themselves to death in the filthy streets of that tiny town. For the Pine Rigde residents, Whiteclay is of course a tragedy. Reportedly, most families lost someone to that place.
NE 87, Rushville, Nebraska, USA
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc., 2012
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On Google Street View Whiteclay is mislabeled Rushville, even though on Google Maps it appears under its real name. In that area, there's no traffic, no tourism, no business other than four or five local beer stores. Strange enough, the camera-equipped Google cars passed through the town over and over again. First time in October 2008, then in May 2012, then again in August 2013 and, finally, in 2021. Four times in a bit over a decade, that's as much coverage as the one given to a metropole like Philadelphia. Not only did Google cameras cover Whiteclay's main street; they explored all the nooks and crannies of the side streets, capturing groups of stranded people hidden in the backyards of shacks or under trees. For whatever reason, the evil that blights the Pine Ridge community in the "unincorporated" town of Whiteclay definitely is, or was, of interest to the Google Maps content creators. It is exposed on Google Street View with the frightening effectiveness of surveillance capitalism.
Westover St. Rushville, Nebraska
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc.,
2013
Jacob Street, Rushville, Nebraska
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc., 2013
Jacob Street / NE 87, Rushville, Nebraska
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc., 2013
Westover St, Rushville, Nebraska
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc., 2013
NE 87, Whiteclay, Nebraska
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc., 2013
NE 87, Rushville, Nebraska
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc., 2012
Before noticing Whiteclay (mislabeled Rushville by Google) on the map, we had passed through that town by car. That was in the summer of 2010. Upon arrival, we didn't have a clue about what was going on there. Normally, larger groups of homeless people can be seen in big cities. But in a vast, empty, rural area, it struck us as unusual. As we were in the region for another artistic inquiry, my first reflex was to take pictures of that place at burst speed. Just like Google, I took a lot of shots from the car, while my sister was driving. Several times, we drove up and down the NE-87 that divides the town.
To photograph people is to violate them
Susan Sontag
When checking the photos I'd taken that day, I perfectly got what Susan Sontag meant when she said: "To photograph people is to violate them". I had the feeling I was robbing the last dignity of the people lying dead-drunk by the side of the road.
Can we, should we, show everything? This is a dilemma that probably each documentary photo-reporter has faced one day. In other words, the delicate question of the legitimacy of showing suffering people. Finally, I decided to not show my images of Whiteclay. Instead, I started to dig deeper into the labyrinth of vision machines and surveillance images. How to interpret Google's Whiteclay footage in the light of geospatial intelligence? Are these images even analyzable? Should we see them as accidental documents of human misery in a remote area of the world? What about the voyeuristic dimension here? Wouldn't it be absurd to accuse automatic cameras of voyeurism?
Epilogue
Jacob Street / NE 87, Rushville, Nebraska
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc., 2021
In 2021, Google Street View gathered evidence indicating that things eventually changed in Whiteclay. The beer stores all seem closed now. Many have been torn down. Half of the town has become a deserted landfill. At the north entry of town, on the side of South Dakota, the words HOPE have been written on an abandoned truck. At the south entry, on the Nebraska side, a nursing home was built...
NE 87, Rushville, Nebraska, USA
GOOGLE STREET VIEW © GOOGLE Inc., 2021