Social Media, Modelling's Newly Acquired Cruel Mistress

Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Miranda Kerr; All names that spring to mind with the term ‘model’ along with the flash photography, white backgrounds, those weird umbrella things they use to reflect light, big agencies and delicate figures. Well what if I told you that in their place comes a new generation of bedroom models and all one needs is a camera, a phone, a mirror and sex appeal although the last one is down to the genetic lottery or photoshop skills. You decide.

A stock photo but you get the idea, set background, perfect lighting and all that jazz

As a social media user and someone who has given up on the idea of being a model since I realised his peak was getting his picture taken on his confirmation (like, look at that handsome bastard), I noticed a phenomenon as of recent. That phenomenon is when an Instagram user gets to a certain amount of activity on their profile, they become what is a mix of a celebrity and a model, or as the kids today call it ……. A social media influencer! This would be like calling a celebrity a personality for simply being in the spotlight, the likes of Ms Kim Kardashian West, Heidi Montag or my personal favourite, Guy Fieri. These ‘social media influencers’ enjoy perks such as sponsorships from clothing and make-up brands, all the likes they could ever want and most importantly, the opportunity to make money off other people looking to gain some social media clout through ‘shout outs’ where for a fee you too can have your name on pages with upwards of ten thousand followers.

I spoke to T, (a model who has followed the more traditional route) to get her take on things. “It definitely has changed the industry. Instagram has become a platform for you to sell yourself as a model and acts as its own portfolio and agencies may be more likely to accept applicants with more followers. That said I know people who model outside agencies who find Instagram useful as they make more money doing so as they avoid the commission that agencies usually take”

The main thing I took from this is that the ‘do it yourself’ attitude that I once believed was restricted to the indie music industry has covered not just audible expression but media as a whole.

To get more on this I decided to go to Alice Jordan, a photographer and a student of TU Dublin who specialises in concert photography. I wanted to get the opinion from the other side of modelling or a behind the lens view of things if you will and see if she thought the career was becoming more self-sufficient.

Alice specialises in event photography and perfectly capturing a moment.

“I think it it's more self-reliant, as I can do all the work for it and I don’t need outside help but not self-sufficient, I will always need clients, I won’t be able to make money off or survive off it without people hiring me or buying my work.”

I then asked about the importance in a strong social media presence to which she said

“I think it really depends on what sort of work you do or aim to do. A lot of my current work and future goals is focused on sports or concerts, and typically the photos I take are for bands or athletes who use them for their social media and so I need to maintain a presence to get noticed and to build a clientele. However, the corporate world in Ireland still isn't too focused around social media unlike other countries, I work as an assistant to another photographer who typically does portraiture and substantial more corporate stuff and he doesn’t rely on social media at all. I think it can be a benefit especially to young photographers but at it's not a requirement and simply having a good website or through word of mouth can often land you jobs!”

That got me thinking about what led to this, as there is a clear dichotomy between Alice who is the young photographer who grew up with social media and uses it in both her professional and personal life. The person she works with however is older and social media would have been more an after thought in his life as opposed to a reality, they grew up in.

It also began to make me wonder was this all even good for the industry. Is putting control over the artistic medium into the hands of the common person not a recipe for an oversaturation of the industry? One in which clout is the deciding factor of what gets popular instead of quality? I still had questions so I turned to friend and photographer Darragh Cunningham.

Darragh uses light to capture the beauty of a scene, note the mirror effect in the puddle.

“It has definitely made it easier for people to develop the craft but a lot harder to make it in the industry due to there being a lot more competition. There is a complete oversaturation of low quality content amongst social media users and I find that my work often gets drowned out by said content that doesn’t have much effort put into it which hinders my money making ability”

Well how did this all happen? How did we go from the set to the sitting room? To figure this out we need a brief history lesson on the platforms that we use daily. Facebook was launched in 2004, six years later Instagram followed in 2010. These platforms had very different goals in mind. Facebook originally aimed to be a platform to share status updates, message others and most importantly, play Farmville, lots and lots of Farmville. Picture sharing was a feature but that’s all it was, a feature. Facebook for years was the main social network because it was whatever people made it. You had people who simply wanted to exchange messages, some who wanted to post pictures of their ‘mad night out with the lads’ and some like me who just wanted to look after his very own digital farm.

In all seriousness Instagram is a great tool for photographers willing to put the work in. This article just needed a zesty meme.

Instagram then came along and did something very different. Instead of broadening the utility of social networking it took the opposite approach and actually narrowed our potential to socialise. One switching from Facebook to Instagram would find they could no longer share statuses, YouTube videos or playing games. Instead users were shoe horned into posting pictures, the only format of expression Instagram would allow along with a caption. In limiting the users experience it highlighted a style. Where one could scroll through Facebook and find several completely different posts stylistically, Instagram gave and most importantly targeted our societies vanity and pure narcissism.

In limiting our options, it expanded our horizons on how far we could push the envelope and before long, Instagram had serious photographers using it to publish their work for an audience who’s only concern was their pictures. People hopped on and before long everyone was using it. A picture only format also made it the perfect social network for phone users and stood out among its peers for doing so. In the past a social media platform that left PC users behind was unheard of, but Instagram would change that and snapchat would follow in its footsteps a year later, filling in the void of an easy to use photo-based messaging app.

Where I am going with this is showing the perfect storm that led to how social media both took off and became destined to take over visual arts as a whole. With models and photographers quickly coming on board, websites run by agencies started taking a backseat as people in these professions could quickly share any of their work without a middle man. As media consumers were being fed straight from the user and we loved it.

Us as a people are moving into lives where convenience is one of key parts of our existence. Hands full but you want to listen to music? Can I get an “Alexa play Despacito”? Too lazy to select the next episode of that series? Netflix doesn’t need to see you to know you’re pigged out on the couch at 2am and in a few seconds the next one will auto play without you even having to watch the credits.

We have all been there no need to be ashamed of it.

All this means is that the producers have a perfect climate to publish content as they want it published and consumers have an even better to select a streamline of content customized to them which has led to this self-reliance. Producers reaping benefits of a cut of their money being taken and consumers having their content in a nice convenient package.

So, at the end of the day I guess social media is here to stay and invade our lives more and more. It just comes down to the symbiotic relationship between the consumer and producer.