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Distributed for Intellect Ltd

Instafame

Graffiti and Street Art in the Instagram Era

Instafame charts the impact of Instagram—one of the world’s most popular social media platforms—on visual culture in the mere eight years since its launch. MacDowell traces the intuitive connections between graffiti, street art, and Instagram, arguing that social media’s unending battle for a viewer’s attention is closely aligned with eye-catching ethos of unsanctioned public art. Beginning with the observation that the scroll of images on a sideways phone screen resembles nothing so much as graffiti seen through the windows of a moving train, Macdowell moves outward to give us a wide-ranging look at how Instagram has already effected a dramatic shift in the making and viewing of street art.

200 pages | 52 halftones | 7 x 9 | © 2019

Art: Photography

Culture Studies

Design

Media Studies


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Reviews

"By characterizing graffiti and street art as 'flexible aesthetic features', MacDowall binds the latter to media forms, thus creating a feedback loop between digitally influenced practices of graffiti and street art and Instagram’s digital platform, supporting his claim that ours is an Instagram era. . . . The book offers a well-synthesized review of the various scholarly theses on graffiti and street art as well as an insightful history of its photography."

Space and Culture

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