A day on Social Media

An analysis of the identity troughout the Photography and the Video

A contemporary social analysis highlighting the effect of social media, such as Instagram, on the new generations. Through the project “A day in Social Media”, it represented the artist as the Influencer of an unreal world and at the same time the factual.

In the last 10 years social media has caused a huge change in the global society, as the conception and the value of everyone’s life becomes now about how they look in the virtual world and what the public thinks about them. The popularity is the new main virtue, for oneself and the social appreciation. At the moment one person has 10.000 followers, it is considered an influencer - a person who can decide the selection and taste of people, someone who can take a picture in his bathroom and made it as if it was taken in Bali.

The project narrates different everyday actions that can exist in a day of my own life, also represented by me, but in the role of a character completely removed from my personality, based on the aesthetic and personality that is normalized in the social media of influencers. Throughout the compositions, nods are made to photographs of food, lifestyle, fashion photography, urban photography, selfies, and all those poses studied down to the millimeter in which the elements and the space count to give meaning to the theme that is to be shown. The scenes Emphasize the aesthetics above the truth, and the result is the satire of a life, organized exclusively for being seen by the public.

This artwork, with a polished aesthetic and a hidden ironic meaning, is the outcome of a project started in 2021. It focuses on the figure of an artist as a supposed Influencer, synthesizing the experience in actions with vivid aesthetic and elaborated artistic direction.

The project stems from my own experience with mobile phone overuse. I'm one of those people who researches photographic techniques of other artists on Instagram, the effects, the procedure, and how they defend their profession; however, beyond that didactic virtue, I then do what everyone else does: look at my friends in their routines and moods, post photos out of interest or boredom, tag people to drag them into the group, follow the celebrity of the moment and idolize them if necessary…

I ended up spending more than two hours daily with my phone, scrolling and giving likes. The excuse was that this way I was resting and, incidentally, learning new photographic trends that could help me. That excuse was only a small part of the reality; the truth was that I was – and still am today – addicted to a parallel world, where everything is perfect, where I only have to use one finger and breathe for it to keep working, a world where everything is beautiful and enviable, polished although unreal.