A few years back I was idly wondering which photograph had been viewed the most. Of course, there are many different ways to define this: the most widely viewed (where diversity of viewer location matters), viewed by the most people, viewed the most times etc. I settled on the vague idea of a photograph that would be instantly recognizable to the greatest number of people across the planet.
There is no easy way to measure directly (and that isn’t the point anyway) but at the time the one photograph that seemed to fit the bill was Bliss by Charles O’Rear, which was used as the default wallpaper for Windows XP.
I think part of what makes Bliss so successful is that it is so empty: a blank space for your ideas about the photograph. Sometimes I’ve felt that it conveyed a sense of techno-optimism from an earlier age: a vast world of possibility, waiting to become something else.
Recently I got to wondering if this would still be the most viewed photograph. Maybe yes, probably no. But what could take its place? In earlier decades it seemed that the global experience was more centralised in a few ways. For many, many years if you used a computer anywhere (at the library, at school, at home) there was a very good chance you’d find yourself on Windows XP. The same may still be true for Windows being everywhere but I expect that usage of desktop computers may be in decline. Looking at a history of Windows wallpapers we see that Microsoft seems to prefer graphic backgrounds over photographs since Windows XP.