My frsutration with Instagram is that I’ve not been able to find much in way of artistic, social docmentary/commentary, landscape or any other of the aesthetic merits you list.
Sebastio Salgado, Cory Richards, Steve mcCurry, Nathan Hughes, Lee Trumpmore, Matthew DeLorme, Paris Gore, Laurence Crossman-Emms, Boris Beyer, Duncan Philpott, Rupert Fowler, Sam Needham, Dan Milner, Sterling Lorence, Mattias Fredrikson, Dave Trumpmore, Gary Perkin, Sven Martin, Alex Brunst and Lee Jeffries are just a few of the photographers I follow on Instagram.
Obviously there is a heavy leaning there towards MTB photographers but across those guys there is a fairly heavy flow of stunning and inspiring imagery. It might be a bit light on hard hitting social commentary or photo journalism, but that’s not what I want in my news feed; I want images that might inspire me to go out on the bike and take my camera with me.
There will obviously be fine art photographers and pro photographers in various disciplines who will shun the platform because it doesn’t pay them to share their work that way but that in itself doesn’t negate the platform.
As an aside I follow many more illustrators than I do photographers and there are genuinely some of the best illustrators in the world on IG and their content is incredible.
There is a lot of garbage on there.
Well it’s open to everyone. Across all the internet forums and social media platforms there won’t be many great pieces of literature posted, despite millions of words being posted daily. Same for pictures.