Artists, athletes, journalists and musicians are all using Instagram to express themselves in fascinating ways. Also: cute dogs, ridiculous babies, and more food porn than we know what to do with. For most of us, Instagram is our favorite place to upload a sepia-toned selfie.The coolest part is that our selfie lives forever online and can be seen by anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world. It's that kind of global, instant reach that attracted a pair of Instagram lovers from Spain to create what's going to be the world's largest collection of digital photos ever: The Instagramers Gallery.
Much like The Library of Congress, which is curating all American tweets as means to capture the "story of America," the Instagramers Gallery is capturing a global visual record of what was important and inspiring enough for people to shoot and upload to the web. This is becoming quite the global phenomenon. Just last month, two Dutch creatives launched a digital-only Internet museum, further building the trend.
It's not just a website, it's an artistic experience that can be shared globally and visited locally. In December of 2013, the physical gallery opened in the sexy Wynwood arts district of Miami -- making it the perfect place to bring a date before a wild night out on SoBe. The gallery is the only one in the world dedicated to Instagram art features photography from 17 renowned "Instagramers" from Germany, Brazil, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Sweden, South Africa, and the United States. Spain-based artists and technology innovators Jorge Martínez & Phil González believe that through the Instagramers Gallery, both online and in Miami (and Madrid, when the next location opens), you'll be given the opportunity to travel the globe through other people's cameras -- hence their motto of "Know the world. Share the world."
But, like all great social media experiments, it's open to everyone. And their encouraging your participation with the largest prize ever awarded to digital photos: $1,000,000 for the best Instagram of the year. Sign up, upload your favorite Instagram pic of the day, and let the world vote. Each day, someone will win $1000 for the most favorited photo, and those winning finalists will be judged by well-known personalities in the worlds of photography, art, communications and new technologies for the top prize in April.
You can learn more, sign up, and enter at instagramersgallery.com
And follow them for more info on Instagram: @IgersGallery or Twitter: @IgersGallery