Who posts what, why, how, and for whom on Instagram and other social media platforms? These were the questions posed by BilderBewegungBerlin 2019 under the title "Instagramable?". From October 12th to 19th, 2019, young people discussed, photographed, and filmed on this topic from a wide variety of perspectives and approaches in a collaborative seminar with the German Children's and Youth Film Center .
There are no current figures on the number of photos and now also videos posted on Instagram. By 2016, 40 million photos had been published on Instagram. At this very second, that number has increased staggeringly. But what intentions lie behind individual images or entire accounts? What content, opinions, and messages do users convey to their followers, especially on image-based social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube? What value do images have in the flood of media that surrounds us? And what does it mean to participate in this stream of images?
The participants' diverse approaches to social media ranged from constant use to conscious rejection, and these perspectives served as the starting point for their own photographic and cinematic reflections on these questions.
From constantly connected mobile phones to posts on the wannseeFORUM Instagram account – the topic was ever-present.
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Posts and Instagram Stories from the #BilderBewegungBerlin on Instagram
provided valuable input from a journalistic perspective Nadja Masri, freelance photo editor, lecturer at the Ostkreuz School since 2011, and also a juror for photography competitions,Photo Editing – Selecting, Compiling, Being Seen!", she presented criteria for "good pictures" from journalistic photojournalism, such as the occupation of the Hambach Forest, and engaged in a discussion with the participants. The discussion also touched on works by young winners of the German Youth Photography Prize , addressing questions from a youth perspective about using images to tell stories and convey opinions. Everyone was captivated by this intensive exploration of photographic methods for constructing reality and telling stories, and thus also of subjectivity and objectivity in journalistic photojournalism.
Filming Camera exercise 
Develop your own films
Workshop activities in the groups Black and White Photography, Digital Photography, and Short Film:
During the workshop, there were many discussions, for example, in the short film workshop about the influence of influencers on one's own actions and vice versa, as an example of digital self-determination and external control. What one's self-image and actions does a lack of likes on one's own account have on
Discussions about the intentions behind photographs and their publication on social media also developed in the digital photography workshop. How can I inspire people through images? How do I deal with the expectations of followers ? Here, too, the role of likes was strongly addressed, along with the question of adapting one's own content and visual language to follower expectations versus finding one 's own narratives and forms of expression, potentially at the cost of fewer likes.
In the black and white photography workshop, participants explored, among other things, role models and gender stereotypes also relationship between photography and its publication in relation to time and space discussed. How do we appropriate space when we view digital advance information about places through Google & Co. before we even visit them?
Exhibition setup Movie poster Hanging
To implement their concepts for photographic series and a short film arising from these questions, the participants experimented with photography using an analog camera, developing films and prints in the black and white darkroom, trying out camera settings and working intensively on individual digital images up to the presentation, developing a film idea, breaking it down into images in a storyboard, up to the post-production of a short film.
Presentation of the results from the three workshops
Exhibition of black and white photography Exhibition of Digital Photography Film discussion after the screening
On the penultimate day of BBB19, the BilderBewegten 2019 presented their "Instagramable?" works to guests. Some of the works were also published on Flickr and Vimeo.
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The opening event was an exhibition by the black and white photography workshop group, featuring the photographic series "The world needs to know", "Time Jump", "Visual representation of gender-specific movement patterns", "that gives me energy, nature, love", "Magic of the place", "Untitled", and others.
The second stop was the exhibition of the Digital Photography Workshop, which showcased a selection of works. The spectrum of works ranged from street photography and the interplay of staging and light, to the exploration of objects (making-of-Insta-Stories), images that childhood memories , and a series that seeing eye focused on
The event concluded with a screening and Q&A session for the short film "Follow me", which deals with the merging of digital and physical space, an Instagram user's interaction within it, and the resulting effects on action and identity formation.
The BilderBewegungBerlin2019 (Image Movement Berlin 2019) has once again left behind many intense impressions, learning experiences, and of course, images, some of which – also relevant to the theme – are online on Instagram, Vimeo, and Flickr. Enjoy!
(Information about the #bbb19 team, among other things
The BilderBewegungBerlin took place in cooperation with the German Children's and Youth Film Center and as part of the collaboration in the program "Political Youth Education in the AdB" in the project group "Digital Media and Democracy" .
The bbb19 was funded by the Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family/Berlin and the funding project of the Berlin State Youth Council “Young, refugee, self-determined”
