The Joy of Gif

Commissioned image for the Joy of GIF exhibition at The Photographer's Gallery in London.

The image depicts the progressive degradation of an image caused by applying every single Instagram filter in turn. I happen to believe that the filter process in apps like Instagram and now increasingly pervasive across digital photography is a semi-conscious process of legitimisation in time, engraining disposable images of the moment with a patina of memory and experience, in order to save and justify them.

The source image is a photograph of an architectural visualisation, part of the Render Ghosts series, i.e., it is already an unreal and imaginary projection of a possible future, which is worn away by our attempt to memorialise it, before it has even fully formed.