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Instagram in Athens

16 April 2012 / 16:04:34  GRReporter
3776 reads

Minor details or milestones, everyday situations or exceptional moments, emotions, secret glances, new friends. All of this turns into images, small windows to the world without borders by thousands of Instagramers, which fill the application of the year 2011, according to Apple.

So, it was only a matter of time before an exhibition with pictures of such "moments" would be organized in Athens. Over the last month the architect Anastasis Stamatakos (@ stamanas) lives and thinks only through the filters of Instagram, as he has taken over the initiative for organizing this state-of-the-art, as far as Greece is concerned, exhibition. The idea has always existed, but became more concrete when the youth who opened the restaurant Red Dot, asked that the opening be done with a photographic exhibition.

It should be noted that Instagram is a relatively new social networking site which, although limited to one application (app) for mobile phones, travels around the world and shows interesting photographic moments to its users. The application (available for iPhone, and now also for Android devices) allows the user to process the picture he has taken through 18 different filters, to upload it on his account, to comment on it or to accept comments on it.

Although it’s still young, the new social network Instagram is growing so fast that Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, "was forced" to buy it for 1 billion US dollars.

Anastasios Stamatakos has been preparing the exhibition for a month, and the most difficult of all for him was to set out rules for sending the photos as well as to negotiate with people from the Internet, whom he previously did not know: "I started with a general idea in my head about how will the pictures, inspired by dice, be exhibited. Why dice? This looks like a game, and on the other hand it allows you to easily deploy up to 6 images in one box."

"Then the die became a domino, which is dominated by one white and one black die. I started with this philosophy - to show in six steps all the rules and details of the game. Once the sixth step was uploaded we had 96 entries in the first 10 minutes. The entire communication, organization, coordination, instructions, and finally the exhibition were conducted through Instagram following the six steps, which I personally coordinated."

So, 96 Greek "photographers" using Instagram, from Greece and around the world, are creating pictures in the city, by the sea, in aircraft, in the bar, during their holidays, while riding a bicycle, in the train, in their room and then they choose their best 350 shots. Those unique moments in time when everything is in absolute equilibrium, come together in an exhibition.

Whether Stamatakos knows all of the 96 photographers? "So far I know about half of them. These are ordinary people, some of them do work in the field of some art (photographers, designers, architects), while others do not: there are journalists, bank staff, there is even an owner of a warehouse for building materials. However, they all love to photograph their daily lives, not professionally. They live in different places – Thessaloniki, Kithnos, Crete, Kimolos, Zakynthos, Tripoli, Athens, Rhodes, Norway and other places. A person becomes addicted to Instagram. When you enter the application, you start seeing everything around you as some pictures. All photographers (with some exceptions) will show their photos using pseudonyms from the application."

Fours, ones, sixes and all possible combinations of dice are filled with InstaPhotos and occupy the three levels of the newly opened bar and restaurant in Gazi Red Dot.

This is how the moments turn into a game and the social network becomes flesh and blood. Approximately this way a large group of friends is created with artistic interests and their meeting with the audience is set for 20th of April, 2012.

The exhibition will open with a party and the music of George Haronitis on Friday 20th of April at 21:00.

The exhibition will run from 20th of April until 20th of May.

Location: Red Dot, No. 24 "Evmolpidon" St. & "Triptolemou" St., Gazi, tel: 210-3411725.

 

Tags: exhibition photos Instagram application Facebook Mark Zuckerberg iPhone Android devices
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