Which likeness is truest?

Browsing the user group for Landscapes at flickr.com there are certain locations, subjects, or techniques that come up repeatedly. In this group, at least, Scotland and Iceland and Norway are frequent places for the thrilling play of light and weather and composition. Of course the golden hour around sun up and sun down, as well as the adjacent blue hour are well represented, too. But seeing one of the tidal ebb and flow for Mont San Michel in Normandy made me wonder – which of these thousands of amateur, enthusiast, and paid professional renderings of the Mont is truest to life? Which composes the structure and the life that goes on there (residents’ experiences, but also engaged with tides of tourists coming in and out) in the most accurate and understandable context? This is perhaps an open question; not one quickly answered. Typing “mont san michel” in the flickr.com searchbox brings up thousands of shared images. Here is a screenshot from the December 13th, 2015 search on the first page of returns. Which then is the ‘real’ Mont San Michel, I wonder? In order to answer that probably it would take some fieldwork on site to know the conditions of the geography and seasons, as well as the life on the island and the patterns of tourists – their purposes and effects.

screenshot of flickr.com searchbox 13 dec 2015 “mont san michel”