Last year, the Flickr Foundation launched an archiving tool for Flickr: Data Lifeboat. Since it launched in November, hundreds of Flickr archives have been made. We’ve taken the chance to highlight some Flickr members as great examples, and talk with those people about their experiences on Flickr, showcase their Data Lifeboat archives, and learn more about their practice.
To that end, let me introduce you to Greg Friedman, who goes by TokyoMorningDetails on Flickr. His beautiful documentary of morning life in Tokyo is rich with colour, light, and everyday life, and he’s chosen his Morning Selection album to display as an archive on our Showcase page. Thank you, Greg!
Flickr Foundation: Why did you start taking photos?
Greg: When I started taking photos seriously in about 2020, it was out of a desire to document and share the life I saw around me, life as expressed in the little things found in and around people’s living spaces. So many of the people doing interesting photography on flickr are expatriates, people living in new surroundings. For those of us like that, our adopted place/culture stimulates us to try to grasp it, to make sense of it, and to play with it. I think Japan is often portrayed in fairly narrow, stereotyped ways, and I wanted to share the Japan of everyday life.
FF: Who or what has most influenced your approach to photography?
Greg: My favorite photographer remains Andre Kertesz, who never failed to find the remarkable, even in the most mundane situations. But I had two early influences on how I view the world, or on how it can be seen. One was the Japanese painter Yozo Hamaguchi, who gets close and personal with tiny things. Another was the nature photographer Eliot Porter, who focused on the details of nature, rather than its grand aspects. (In a sense, I’m also a nature photographer. I photograph human nature and human lives as seen in their creations and arrangements.) I have to mention one more person, which is the mom of one of my childhood friends. She took us boys on early morning excursions because she wanted to show us how special the world is in those hours before the world gets underway in earnest. That experience of the magic of “pre-civilization” stayed with me, I believe, so I am grateful to her.
FF: How has your photography changed since you started?
Greg: Over the past couple of years, it feels like a new species of photo has entered my vocabulary, one that’s more about light than about objects.That’s probably a natural progression, given the wonderful light here in Tokyo. Yet at the same time I have a desire to return to the basics, to get back to focusing on the presence and gravitas of objects.
FF: Which of your Flickr photos is your favorite? Why?
Greg: Almost any of the ones in the Morning Selection album, but can I pick two? Probably my favorite subject to shoot is fabric. Both of these hopefully show this.
FF: How did Flickr become part of your photography practice?
Greg: Flickr was important to my practice early on because what I wanted to do was share my morning experiences with others. Flickr provides a great community of people who have superb sense and intelligence regarding photography, life, art, and…well, what else is there besides those three, really? People here have been very supportive of and interested in my work from the beginning, and have inspired me to keep finding stuff.
FF: Tell us a bit about mornings in Tokyo…
Greg: Good question. I think the answer is in my photos! But I’ll say that early mornings anywhere are very special. It’s when the elves are still about. The key is being open to finding the elves.
FF: What aspect(s) of this subject did you wish to encapsulate in your Data Lifeboat?
Greg: I felt that those photos were my state of the art, from a period between roughly 2021 to 2023 when I believe I saw things most clearly.
FF: Flickr.org’s mission is to keep Flickr pictures visible for 100 years. If someone discovered these images in an archive decades from now, what context would you want them to have?
Greg: I’ll say here what I often do, which is that the things I shoot reflect a disappearing world. People should know that there was once a more communal, more egalitarian, less sterile and more funky way of life than the one now infecting Tokyo and other places in this world. I really hope that people can get hints of that from my photos.
FF: Data Lifeboat was developed in part to help save Flickr photos as cultural heritage, similar to photos that now exist in Flickr Commons. How do you see your work fitting into a broader cultural conversation?
Greg: I’m very honored to be part of that effort, and that conversation. I would hope that what we put out on Flickr leads to a broader and deeper understanding of the world and what’s in it, as well as who. There’s this word “diversity”, right? It’s become such a loaded concept, to the point where some actually see it as a dirty word. So I hope that my pictures can lead to some appreciation and respect for it, actually.
FF: How do you want to be remembered as a photographer?
Greg: He kept it real. And funky.
Explore Greg’s MorningDetails archive
Digital Legacy Research by the Flickr Foundation
The Foundation is conducting in depth research with Flickr members about their thoughts and feelings about their Flickr accounts. From a survey with almost 2,500 responses to a market research survey of current platform download tools to 1:1 interviews and some group forums, we understand very well how valuable people’s Flickr accounts are. It’s been touching and fascinating to hear how the people we’ve met feel about their time spent on Flickr, not only from a showcase point of view but also to hear stories about the communities and friends they’ve made here.
We’ll be publishing that research at the end of March, through our newsletter and on the Flickr Foundation blog.