Only at the insistence of his beloved, who felt ‘something had to be done’ with all those photographs, Gustave with some hesitation ventured online on the free photographers’ platform Fotolog.
293 photos later he suddenly couldn’t log in anymore. As the notorious Fotolog helpdesk remained indifferent, the only thing to be done was to start a new account. Enter meneer Hoeba:
A further 257 photos later the entire website fell apart, and while many Fotolog friends made their escape to Facebook, Gustave sought refuge on Flickr.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/meneerhoeba/
On Flickr one’s photos look a million times better than they do on Fotolog, and yet, for reasons as yet unknown, the social contacts that so easily flourished on Fotolog all but dwindle and die on Flickr. For Gustave either platform served, not as a showcase, but as an experimental space for his ironic photographs and photo montage trials, such as his adaptation of the well-known Mount Rushmore set-up.
As of 2010, a group of Fotolog pals called ‘the Palnet’ met up annually, always close to the home of the year’s host, each time in a different part of Europe. These events opened up creative sources in Gustave in the fields of photo enhancement and image manipulation.
Read about the Palnet meet-ups here.
Gustave Petit 