Words: Will Pellow (he/him)
You are choosing to feature a person in a digital space that, while not physically tangible, is irrevocably tied to your person.
This summer I took a photo of my friends swimming in a lake.
The image has cemented itself in my mind. When I close my eyes, I can feel the anticipation of the first night on holiday, that giddy excitement at the warmth of the lake water, and barely unpacked, the spontaneity of our late night swim.
Today, the photo is positioned proudly above my bed, not because I think it’s particularly unique. Don’t get me wrong, the colour of the water, the glint of bugs in the air caught by the flash; it’s all quite beautiful. But the most special thing about it for me is the moment that it captures. Pure, unbridled emotion and a feeling captured in time. We all have a photo like this, both personal and evocative. So what does it mean when I choose to share this memento with the world by pressing post on Instagram?
We live in an increasingly individualised world, spending more time at home and losing physical workplaces and third spaces. But while it’s true that the act of socialising in communities has changed and that we are more isolated, that doesn’t mean we have suddenly lost our longing for connection with one another.
In fact, I believe that we have adapted to a new, technological world to fill an emotional void, in the absence of community presence, we use social media to sustain our relationships. Social media dominates our lives, and a natural consequence is that now it – and the photos we share on it – play a sustaining role in our relationships. Photography is the most significant example of this because it is the changing camera trends amongst today’s youth that visually signpost this longing for connection in the digital sphere.
Specific textures, compositions, and subjects all define the Instagram feeds of 2026. Photo dumps capturing a view from a window, playing cards spread out between hands on a table, or jumbled rails of clothes at a second hand clothes shop, a CD or vinyl of a specific, favourite album. The resurgence of film photography: an expensive, unreliable medium that’s only benefit is sheer artistry. Expected, candid style of capture, no longer curating a scene but simply documenting it instead. A busy dance floor or a birthday party recorded from an observational, uninterrupting perspective. An attitude of nonchalance and ‘not taking Instagram too seriously.’ Humour in the things we choose to share. Even the shift towards landscape aspect ratios, breaking free of the slop of short longform video. All of these trends stand in contrast to the sterilised, curated aesthetics of social media in a pre-COVID era. Think centred posed photos, highly filtered and crisp with eye-watering resolutions. Ultimately, we are opting for character and artistry over functionality when it comes to the photos that we take, searching for character and identity. To me, this shows a longing for traces of humanity in the media we consume.
We desperately want to know each other personally and understand those we are observing, causing a shift in not only what we consume online but also what we post ourselves. We wish to be known intimately as much as we seek to understand others in the same way and photography changes to reflect this.
So, this brings me to my somewhat hyperbolic title. While it seems like a trivial act, putting someone in your Instagram photo-dump is done with intention. You are choosing to feature a person in a digital space that, while not physically tangible, is irrevocably tied to your person. Some would lament how our social media presence has become intertwined with our relationships, but I don’t think we have to see it this way necessarily. The liking of stories, featuring faces in photo carousels, and sliding into DMs are all done with intention and are a natural occurrence of human interaction translated into a digital world. Even when removed from each other’s presence physically, we seek connection. I don’t believe that social media can substitute the real relationships we have within our lives, but I would choose to view it as an extension of these real connections into a world where we now spend so much of our time.
Photography manifests our perspective, revealing our thoughts and intentions in that which we choose to capture. So, it makes perfect sense that photography and digital media trends reveal this hunger we have for humanity. I have hope for our communities when I see the intimacy and emotion in today’s photography and use of social media. Because even somewhere as cold and abstracted as the digital world, our desire to connect with one another, an impulse that makes us human, slips through the cracks, imbuing the content we consume with a warmth and character that brings me comfort.
