Last week I visited Happy Place, an installation made specifically for people to take Instagram photos. Here’s how it works. Visitors pay a fee (around $30 I believe) and then they can go through a series of sets taking photos of themselves in them.
Setups like this have gotten a lot of flack and I don’t disagree that they’re flawed. I think it’s important not to correlate manufactured images created for the Internet with genuine happiness. Your emotional well being and self worth should never be tied to social media. That said, if you recognize the cultural pitfalls of this kind of experience, there’s no reason not to enjoy it. I had a fun time photographing the space but I was very self aware about the experience.
The Globe arts critic went on a big rant about how terrible Happy Place is which I think was a little out of his lane. In no way does this space claim to be art, and it definitely isn’t. And although social media culture is a marker of one of our cultural problems, it’s also an economic industry and a marketing platform. For a middle aged fine arts critic to spend a thousand words complaining about it felt a bit like an out of touch uncle ranting about millennial consumption of avocado toast.
Photos by myself and Karen Morales.