The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos

All images courtesy Emma Sheffer.Instagram travel accounts — which tend to showcase photographs of sweeping, saturated landscapes with nary a body in sight (save for, maybe, the photographer’s blushing lover) — have changed travel: social media-fueled tourism is real. Insta Repeat, an Instagram account advertising “Déjà Vu Vibes” — the way another account might herald wanderlust vibes — aggregates images from various unrelated travel accounts into collages of nearly indistinguishable photos: twelve disembodied hands holding a leaf; twelve white girlfriends reaching back for their photographer-boyfriend’s hands; twelve drone shots of snowy treetops; twelve alarmingly meta handheld phones, mid-photograph, capturing a scene in a scene. Emma Sheffer, the filmmaker managing the account, told Hyperallergic over email: “I think we all constantly see imagery pop up around us that is familiar, but on Instagram it seems to be almost encouraged by the monetization of popularity.

Source: hyperallergic.com