Love it or hate it, Instagram has been showing photography since 2010 and the past sixteen years of photo posting have passed quickly. The first Instagram post was a photo of South Beach Harbor at Pier 38. The rest is history, photographic history, becuse Instagram would not exist without the photographic medium. I went looking for that first ever photograph, which the internet had told me had been taken by Mike Krieger, a co-founder of the app. However, what I found was a different ‘first ever’ Instagram photograph, taken and posted by Kreiger’s business partner, Instagram CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom. A picture of a dog in Mexico near a taco stand, with a guest appearance by his girlfriend’s foot. One image would I presume have been of a landscape and the other that I have seen is a poorly executed shot by an amateur. Perhaps this is important. Perhaps both pointed to the future.

Only Wikipedia gives the landscape as the first image and as we all know that is not to be trusted, in any form of serious research, but they must have got that information from somewhere. And this for me is the central issue with Instagram in 2026. What is true and what is not? What it is, what it wants to be and what it says it is!

Instagram as a promoter of the impossible lifestyle is a common trope. A trope that has become a dangerous influence on many, particularly the young and vulnerable. The rise of the influencer has proven to be toxic. Paid for reviews and opinions are never to be believed, and yet they often are. Instagram today is not just a platform for photography, but a marketplace for product. That may be through an obvious product sell, or a more sophisticated hidden promotion, but either way this is Instagram as a shop, a retail environment. Photographers are also selling themselves, through their work on the platform. Hoping for likes, community and to be noticed.

It is this recognition of Instagram as a retail landscape, that many photographers seem to have a problem with. As they struggle with the reality that it is no longer a free exhibition space for their photography, and that of others. The introduction of ‘Reels’ and paid for advertising was the most obvious indicator of this change. The addition of audio to accompany stills was an additional proof that photography was no longer the principle concern for those in charge of the platform’s future. Something confirmed by Adam Mosseri, Meta’s Head of Instagram since 2018, when he said to Vanity Fair magazine, “When you change something, people get frustrated. When people thought of Instagram five or 10 years ago, they thought of a square photo feed. Today you mainly view videos.” Do we?

However, despite this seemingly dismissive attitude to its users, Mosseri seems to think that the future of Instagram is ‘you and I’ as content providers, not photographers, “In a world where there’s an abundance of synthetic content, I actually think people are going to seek out creativity and authenticity and people more, not less. And I think that that will help us.”

That may sound good, if a little presumptuous, but is it a reality? Is Instagram really as pure as he makes out? I think we can agree that it isn’t, but there is some truth in what he says, if our expectations of a platform are clearly defined. Let me give you an example. My teenage daughter wants to work as a theatre production and costume designer. Therefore, she has started an Instagram page to place her drawings, designs and research. As she says, it’s a corporate page! A corporate page that she intends to use to show her work to those in positions of power, evidencing her passion for the subject, she wants to follow as a career. I think that there is a purity to this intention. Yes, she is soft selling herself through her work, but she is not interested in likes, follower numbers, influencing or direct revenue. It’s her pocket-sized portfolio. This takes us back to the early days of Instagram, but I do not think that this is a majority intention. Instead, I think Instagram today is confused as to what it is, or should be. An inevitable outcome when you put ‘control’ in the hands of many overseen by the few. It’s a worthy utopian dream to talk about creative communities being in control, but the reality is that the community on Instagram today is a dysfunctional, diverse, divided family with a totalitarian dictator matriarch.

Instagram has its uses, but it does not exist to please photographers. That is where Instagram is in 2026. Something that photographers have to accept. It may have been built on photography, but that foundation is being built today with different shaped bricks. The question for photographers is, do they want to live in that house.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

©Grant Scott 2026