Photographers using Google Street View - in pictures

9 Rua Pereira da Costa, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil 2010
Jon Rafman is one of a new breed of street photographers sourcing images from Google Street View to create fascinating series of work. Rafman has suggested that it might be the ultimate conclusion of the medium: "it's almost as if the camera is this modern God that sees everything, but doesn't make any moral judgements." Photograph: Jon Rafman

It was an obsessive search for a Google Street View picture of a recent girlfriend that first sent Rafman trawling through the images. Realising he had no photos of her, and remembering a holiday in Italy where he was watching her from the first floor balcony and saw a Google car drive by, he spent weeks looking for an image of her. It became, he says, “one of my iconic images" Photograph: Jon Rafman

8 Rue Valette, Pompertuzat, Midi- Pyrenees, France 2011
Rafman set up and curates the site 9-eyes.com, an online repository of Street View scenes. "I'm trying to find the sublime in this post-internet age we live in." Photograph: Jon Rafman

D52, Blaru, France 2011
"These are photographs that no one took and memories that no one has," says Rafman. "By reintroducing the human gaze, I reassert the uniqueness of the individual." Photograph: Jon Rafman

139 Rua Indiapor, Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil 2012 Photograph: Jon Rafman

Jon Rafman 1379 Elgin Avenue West, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 2010 Photograph: Jon Rafman

Paris street view photojournalist Michael Wolf received an honourable mention in the 2011 world press photo awards for A Series of Unfortunate Events - a collection of photos he had taken of images, or crops of images, from Google Street View displayed on his computer. He was first lured onto Google Street View while living in Paris and looking for ways of viewing this mausoleum-like city that avoided the usual cliches. He became fascinated with the incidental events and actions that Google captures – crashes, brawls, mishaps, or as here, a moment of interaction with the neutral camera Photograph: Michael Wolf/Courtesy of Flowers Gallery, London

Paris street view Photograph: Michael Wolf/Courtesy of Flowers Gallery, London

Paris street view Photograph: michael wolf/Courtesy of Flowers Gallery, London

Paris street view
"In the beginning I found it amazing that if one looked enough one could find almost anything – accidents, heart attacks, people giving you the finger," says Wolf. "It was just an incredible cross-section of events. But then I just realised it's a matter of odds: you will have everything from a woman birthing a child to a guy dying on the street." Photograph: Michael Wolf/Courtesy of Flowers Gallery, London

Paris street view Photograph: Michael Wolf/Courtesy of Flowers Gallery, London

Detroit, MI (2009), 2010
Working in the tradition of the great American documentarists Robert Frank and Walker Evans, Doug Rickard explores the forgotten hinterlands of urban America. He says finding Google Street View was a kind of epiphany: "I felt the same sort of freedom as I would walking around the street." Photograph: Doug Rickard/Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Detroit, MI (2009), 2010 Photograph: Doug Rickard/Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Chicago, IL (2007), 2011
Rickard plays with colour saturation and contrast on the images he selects. "Colours are simultaneously enhanced and drained," says the critic Geoff Dyer. "Sometimes the sky gets rinsed out, other times it has vestiges of the turquoise ache of the Super-8 of old. All of which contributes to the sense we are seeing ghost towns in the process of formation." Photograph: Doug Rickard/Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Watts, Los Angeles, CA (2007), 2010 Photograph: Doug Rickard/Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Baltimore, MD (2008), 2011
Rickard says his work turns Google Street View into a "public poetry" and explores places in the US where "the American dream was shattered or impossible to achieve." Photograph: Doug Rickard/Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York