Missing in Action: Lost Photographers on Flickr

In order to avoid to real writing or photography today, I am playing with my flickr account, my contact list in particular.  I like to weed out inactive accounts from my contact list on occasion.  As I’m looking at it today, I’m wondering what happens to photographers who have been prolific posters only to have suddenly disappeared.  Let’s look at just a few…

StudioBaker posted thousands of lovely urban details and geometric textures, but has now been missing for 9 months.

Neuski was what I think of as a personal photographer, a sort of photo-diarist.  He’s been missing for 7 months.

ClayEnos has been gone 6 months.  I discovered Clay via a web video on a photography site.  The video showed Clay’s street portrait project.  I was fascinated by the simple things he did with a roll of paper and the courage to ask folks if he could take their pictures.  As I’m looking at his flickr profile now, I followed him back to his website and his Twitter feed.  It looks like he has gone Google+, like a lot photogs have, and which I am considering myself.

But the one I miss most is KarenMarleneLarsen.  Karen’s been gone for nearly a year and half now.  I became acquainted with her through her Boston winter cemetery pictures.  Oh the old cemetery shots in snow she used to post!  I also liked her street shots from the Boston area and her trips to New York.  Then, one day, she stopped posting.  I noticed it after awhile.  I looked at her profile to see if she’d left any message behind.  There was a note about her curtailing her flickr activities, but not stopping completely.  I wrote one of our mutual contacts to see what had happened to her.  She was doing okay; she’d just moved away from doing flickr.