I Insert Myself Into Celebrities’ Instagram Photos

My name is Jon Burgerman and I am an artist from the UK who lives in New York. I like seeing cool stuff on Instagram, but equally feel sad, bereft and lonely when I see that whilst I’m on the toilet, in the dark with no toilet paper left, a bunch of people are out partying, enjoying their exciting lives. Rather than becoming more outgoing I thought to remedy this self-pitying low I would simply insert myself into celebrities Instagram photos. A quick Insta-fix for the Insta-generation.
I hoped that the images would be funny and playful with a little serious side to it as well. As much as I’m making broad visual gags with crude collage techniques I wondered why we perform across social media to present a heightened version of our lives. Of course, it’s fun but sometimes we use it as a means to compare ourselves with others and then feel bad about it, and that’s certainly a lot less fun.
The rules I gave myself for my project “Jon’s Famous Friends”, or JFF for short, were simple. Firstly, I would only use photos uploaded to Instragram by the celebrities themselves onto their own accounts. Secondly, I would collage myself into the photos by using a simple straight cut across the sampled image. Finally, I would make sure none of this would take a lot of time. I am lazy and easily distracted.