ABSTRACT
The photo-sharing application Instagram provides its users with an array of tools for visual communication, most prominently photo filters. The photo-sharing application Instagram provides its users with an array of tools for visual communication, most prominently photo filters. Some filters add framing devices to the image. It turned out that the same filter creates different effects when added to a white and a black image respectively. The different filter designs borrow aesthetic resources that historically and culturally belong to other semiotic practices. The visual design of filters has explicit references to photography. Turning to the names of the filters, they raise echoes of a broad array of meaning-making practices, each with its own distinct aesthetics. The adding of filter aesthetics becomes a fixed, pre-designed operation, whereas it used to be a question of the photographer's design and active choice. As such, the semiotic technology of filters polices the aesthetics of Instagram.
