INSTAFOOD: CLASSYFYING THE FOOD POSTER

First of all: I plead guilty. The evidence is clear.

from the prank of ringing of a neighbor’s doorbell

to my first cigarette, isn’t it always this way?

Once one is assimilated into a larger group, selfreflection

vanishes at the cost of self-assertion.

It’s the same with Instagram. I feel at home with

all these images of food. Strictly speaking, the

images with #food posted on the social photo

site increases at a rate of millions. There aren’t

even that many pictures of feet! Under #food: the

McDonald’s maxi menu next to images of cake stands

piled with sugary sweet macaroons, or schnitzel and

fries and – Oh! Hello… a bare male torso. Someone

obviously knows how to entice women. It’s not for

nothing that the tag #foodporn is synonymous

with Instagram.

(Read the entire article after the jump)

It’s the same on Facebook. Since the world has

denounced the elaborate rights of use, status

messages like “Still recovering from last night,”

are just as fleeting as the memories of the previous

evenings debauchery. In this light an image of

one’s lunch comes across as non-committal. Face

detection is impossible! Only Twitter is lagging.

Packing food into 140 characters should be left to

the writers of cookbooks. All the same, Instagram

makes it clear: it’s no longer “my house, my car, my

boat.” Rather “my sandwich, my steak, my favorite

experimental restaurant.” Edo, ergo sum. I eat,

therefore I am. As to the intentions behind all this,

one can only speculate. After all, you can’t throw

every Instagram user into the same pot.

There are, for example, the images from “bestie” top

models Karlie Kloss and Toni Garrn. On Instagram

they post not only backstage pictures from photo

shoots, but also images of their food. If you’re

thinking of cotton balls soaked in orange juice

or veggie sticks, you’re wrong. On the image menus

of Miss Kloss and Miss Garrn are chocolate chip

cookies and pancakes with sausages. In this case the

food images on Instagram almost cause a cognitive

dissonance in the viewer. Those that see themselves

as elite restaurant testers are another kind –

no matter what image they post, it’s clear that

they’re at the place to be. Who needs Yelp when the

information is nicely filtered and freshly served via

the iPhone? Ambitious jetsetters are much the same.

Their images range from the fairly tradition photos

of the best pizza in Naples and tacos in Tijuana to

frog legs in Cambodia, Kokoreç in Turkey, and Kitfo

in Ethiopia – culinary discoveries that even Andrew

Zimmerman from “Bizarre Foods” might not get

behind, and certainly not average-Joe food posters.

Of course, one has to take into the account the

exorbitant competition that is taking place here

– that is, coming up with something better than

a boiled egg with caviar, a masterfully arranged

fruit plate, or, yawn, an avocado sandwich. #vegan

It’s not only top chefs like Jamie Oliver who are

posting prolific numbers of food pics, the number

of food semi-professionals on Instagram make it

a source of inspiration. Many run blogs parallel

to their Instagram imagery, where they promote

their ambitious edible creations ranging from

neon layered cake to bacon shakes. This turns the

followers on Instagram into a focus group. The

images they like appear later in detailed blog posts,

with the 18 filters of Instagram functioning as a

replacement for Photoshop. A circle to which – as I

already confessed – I truculently count myself. It’s

a little like in the past, when one would tag a public

toilet or electrical boxes on the side of the street

with a permanent marker. 

My hashtags: #veggieway.

Happy #foodday!

TEXT: Julia Stelzner

PHOTOGRAPHY: Christiane Bördner