Willie Doherty Snapchats

Willie Doherty Snapchats started off as a series of photographs that I had taken around my hometown on the Northern Ireland border with the intention of painting them. I planned to overlay text on these paintings in such a way that it referenced Willie Doherty’s works, naive painters of the Donegal Gaeltacht, and contemporary internet image sharing culture. In an attempt to self-plagiarise I reworked a handful of these photos into this short project, posting them to the social media platform under a pseudonym and including some Doherty-esque text. I particularly enjoy the temporal nature of using Snapchat as a medium. The images are only viewable for the brief window of 10 seconds before they disappear forever. The work can also be interpreted as a digital performance piece, which has been undertaken over the period of one week. The use of Snapchat is also an attempt to further highlight futility and underline the passive nature of the typical user. Snapchat is controversial for many reasons, including exploitation of users, hacking of private images and intrusive use of GPS location data. A selection of screenshots is displayed here. Images are 1242 × 1656 px.