This title is not an oxymoron. Despite being strangled by ads and fluff (literally, in pet form) Instagram has great potential to communicate serious visual information with captions, taken in by hundreds of people, glancing at their phones for just a few seconds. These projects can take many forms...a combination of poetry and images, a memorial to a loved one rich with universal messages, and serial visual art projects that help you feel the journey of the maker.
Milwaukee artist/poet Paul Druecke's project involves two components...picking up trash and letting the process take him to a place that inspires prose. The phone camera look gives the images an immediate, documentary feeling. The words can pull you inward to the experience, sometimes...other times they allow you to just float away.
Writer/curator Marvin Heiferman's Instagram became immediately changed by his partner Maurice Berger's unexpected death during the first invasion of COVID. It's a dialog that's healing and life affirming while indulging in mourning and celebration. Who Maurice was maybe best be described by his own quote from his December 2017 essay, Using Photography to Tell Stories About Race...
“As a Jew, I have known anti-Semitism. As a gay man, I have known
homophobia. But neither has seemed as relentless as the racism I
witnessed growing up — a steady drumbeat of slights, thinly-veiled
hostility and condescension perpetrated by even the most liberal and
well-meaning people. It was painful to watch, and as my friends let me
know, considerably more painful to endure.”
Carl Corey posts very recent photography projects on his Instagram, allowing the work to unfold as it is created. Most of his images depict the upper Midwest, although a recent Guggenheim fellowship seems to have allowed him to roam a bit further out.
Pat Grace has embarked on a project that has him creating a finished artwork every day, for 100 days. He's on day 80 as this is written. Hope they keep coming after he hits 100! The work is fresh and beautiful, with a subtle message referencing corporate America lurking within it, sometimes underneath the pigment and occasionally in the commentary.
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