#influenced

“#influenced” is a series of still lives that explore the phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of reality television, celebrity, social media, and consumerism: the influencer.

“#influenced” explores the phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of reality television, celebrity, social media, and consumerism: the influencer. Influencers are otherwise-average people who acquire fame not through talent, but through some other means, like appearing on reality tv shows. Using social media, influencers market themselves and shape their lifestyle brands through their partnerships with a variety of companies who pay them to promote products on their feeds. The amount of money that they make for each advertisement is directly tied to the number of followers that they have on any given social media platform. So, in order to be a successful influencer, they must create compelling public personas and tightly curated aesthetics to maintain their follower count.

Each image is both a celebration and critique of a reality tv star turned influencer. The still lives are built to reflect an influencers “brand” – the elements include content from their feed, whether it be photographs they’ve posted, products they advertise, or the increasingly common “Instagram apology letter” (usually a response to followers unearthing old racist, sexist, or otherwise problematic content that the influencer posted before they were famous). The bright colors and aesthetically beautiful objects draw the viewer in, only to find that things are not quite what they appear. The people in the pictures are a façade – cardboard cutouts of the influencers – and the objects are smashed and falling apart, pointing to the aspirational but not-so-secretly manufactured lives that influencers perform. The images are visual manifestations of influencer culture, embodying the push and pull that many of us feel between being fully immersed in social media and casting it aside completely. They are a comment on the ways in which people are willing to commodify themselves for attention and fame and ultimately, how companies and brands will always adapt to changing technologies in order to market their products to larger audiences.