Navigating styles: a critical recension of Instagram and contemporary image by Lev Manovich

Abstract

In the diversity of actual social networks and apps, Instagram is one of the fastest growing platforms claiming by the end of 2017 to have 800 million users. The platform released in 2010 as a picture sharing app for iPhone owners only, is now used on multi-platforms and devices to capture, share and interact with digital images and peers. Under the new media scope author Lev Manovich takes an interesting approach to research behaviors of users on Instagram to outline styles, subjects and trends combining big data, design, anthropology, engineering and art history, his book Instagram and contemporary culture released on 2017 compile four years of research. This critical recension reviews the concepts and findings exposed by Manovich and draw tensions with critic, photography and visual studies to call attention on the multiple ways Instagram is used to navigate reality and build new narrative elements from personal experiences to public community interaction. The social platform uses particular dynamics to create meaning and aesthetics, values and classes: when a user is simultaneously a local and a visitor on physical and virtual experiences of the present moment.