by María Magdalena Ziegler
Most people have an Instagram profile these days. This popular app inhabits in almost every smartphone in the world. Launched in October 2010 and created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, it’s over 400 million users already (April 2016). Around 40 billion photos has been shared at a rate of 80 million photos per day. With these numbers any photo one publish can be easily be lost in the wide ocean of Instagram photos.
That made me think about how pointless it could be to publish any photo to express anything beyond my little circle of friends and acquaintances. Immediately, my second thought was in favor of showing beautiful details of famous (and not so famous) works of art in a neat close up. I began to publish a few pics keeping that in mind and asking everyone “Have you seen ______ lately?”.
My numbers in terms of followers are pretty low, but I have hope people would notice how many beautiful details they are missing from any art piece. They might have looked at the Monalisa several times, but probably they have never noticed how beautiful her hands are. They might have seen a Roger van der Weyden piece in some museum, but they have never noticed the tears in the eyes of the Virgin Mary. They might have looked at Vermeer’s “Girl with pearl earring” dozens of times, but probably never noticed how he lightened up her lips with a single stroke.
So if you are interested in detail, art and art history… look me up on Instagram. I will be glad to have you around: @Z1z1Chan.
ars.vox 