The source images for the project are taken from the social media platform Instagram, where upon uploading an image users can assign hashtags (#) that will group their image together with all other images bearing the same tag, done to generate more views by inclusion in a larger network.
I had been interested in the bedroom hashtag as it was a public grouping of photographs showing spaces one would assume to be private. Included in the images of these spaces, however, I would find nude photographs of users that they had uploaded and tagged to be part of this larger group before Instagram had taken them down, due to violation of the terms of service. The ephemeral gesture of these users stood as a contrast to the rest of the social media platform where images are archived indefinitely.
After sorting through and finding these photographs, I worked on them by blurring, cropping, and altering colors and light levels, having them undergo an almost painterly transformation. This evolution was furthered by the printing and mounting of the physical art work on a large scale. This worked as a method creating images that, through the blurring of lines and altering of colors, become ghosts of their former selves, allowing them to exist on Instagram in a way that is removed from their original function. They are then reinserted into the machine of Instagram under the bedroom hashtag and their own account, @bedroom_ghosts, as ghosts of the originals.