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13 bizarre Google Street View photos that will leave you confused
Google Street View has allowed us to explore random streets around the world for almost a decade and there have been a lot of very unusual and funny sights captured along the way.
From a crew of strange 'pigeon people', a dead donkey mystery and a police chase – here are some of the funniest and most bizarre images.
Canadian artist Jon Rafman has collated many of the best Google Street View images on his brilliant 9 Eyes Tumblr blog.
1. The pigeon people
2. Google had to deny running over a donkey
3. An escaped inmate?
4. A 'robbery' in South Africa
5. These scary people in masks in Mexico
6. Police chase in Serbia
7. A grisly murder? (Google Maps image)
Or just a dog?
8. This 'naked' man ... and his dog
9. A woman giving birth
10. A Samurai sword fight
11. Some monkeys
12. A wandering baby
13. A stuck dog
In a 2009 essay for Art F City, Rafman explained: “I started collecting screen captures of Google Street Views from a range of Street View blogs and through my own hunting.”
He added: “Initially, I was attracted to the noisy amateur aesthetic of the raw images. Street Views evoked an urgency I felt was present in earlier street photography. With its supposedly neutral gaze, the Street View photography had a spontaneous quality unspoiled by the sensitivities or agendas of a human photographer.
“It was tempting to see the images as a neutral and privileged representation of reality—as though the Street Views, wrenched from any social context other than geospatial contiguity, were able to perform true docu-photography, capturing fragments of reality stripped of all cultural intentions.”