After being inspired by Paulus Goerden again (and again), I finally did something I should have done much earlier: I stopped only saving posts and started looking at his Instagram account as a whole system. Not just what he posts, but how he builds meaning around everyday installations through format, repetition and framing.
I already wrote a deeper version of this as an Impulse blogpost, but I wanted to keep a short version here as well because it connects directly to my own thesis process.
What I noticed is that his account is not simply documentation. It’s structured. He repeats a few formats over and over again, and that is exactly why it works so well. The most obvious one is the classic: showing a found everyday installation. But then he expands it with other layers: reconstruction (miniature versions), street interviews, and meta-posts where he includes hate comments or reactions from followers. The installations stay anonymous, but the context around them keeps changing.
This is important for my thesis because it proves something I keep coming back to: the object itself is rarely the main point. The frame is. On Instagram, the frame can be a caption, a voiceover, a title, a hate comment screenshot, or a conversation with a stranger. And suddenly the same pile of boxes becomes either trash, minimalism, or a joke — depending on what kind of frame is offered.
For me, the biggest takeaway is that I shouldn’t think of my work as “just photos” either. The documentation, the text, the exhibition space, the order of images, the titles, even the reactions from other people, all of that is part of the final communication.
Paulus’ work is a good reminder that everyday installations don’t need a museum to become readable. But they do need a structure. And building that structure is basically communication design.
