Selfies flood Fed Square in a festival for the Instagram age

PHOTO 2021 Inside Out Project, Melbourne.Melbourne’s streets have this week been transformed into open-air galleries displaying works from some of photography’s biggest local and international names for the PHOTO 2021 festival. But the hundreds of black and white portraits pasted up in Federation Square are largely works of local amateurs. Photography, after all, belongs to everyone in the Instagram age.These self-portraits form Inside Out, a global art project started in 2011 by French street artist JR, which has so far featured more than 250,000 participants in 129 countries, the world’s largest participatory art project. In each country, participants have submitted portraits around themes such as diversity, hope and climate change.PHOTO 2021’s central theme, to which all the participating artists have responded, is “truth”. Victorians were invited to submit portraits – close crops of faces, no sunglasses – and offer a statement responding to the question “what is your truth?”You might expect the portraits to be dominated by generation TikTok, but the submissions represent a surprising spread.PHOTO 2021 Inside Out Project, Melbourne.“There are young and older people, crossing different demographics – it captures some of the different communities in Melbourne,” says festival director Elias Redstone. “It’s a beautiful community project.”This year…
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