As we reach the apex of a perpetual state of oversharing, it becomes difficult to imagine a life without Instagram. For most, it acts as a low-commitment vehicle for visual communication, and for others, it’s a virtual binary for personal and working lives — and the points where they often intersect. In the case of Willy Vanderperre, Instagram certainly falls into the latter, and now, into print.
which comes as the first installment of a trilogy of Instagram chronicles published by IDEA books. Named after the number of photographs it features, 865 includes a smorgasboard of his most influential campaigns and editorial works, as posted to @willyvanderperre over the last four years. The book tracks everything from his campaigns for Prada, Calvin Klein and Raf Simons; editorial work for Vogue and the New York Times, to personal images of sunsets, clouds, film stills and even Belgian football scores.
865 tracks Willy’s life on Instagram, and fills in the gaps between now and his first Instagram book, 635, which came out in 2015. If you happen to make your way to Dover Street Market to pick it up, you’ll find that the book comes with a fanzine, which is an ode to the remixes and renditions of Willy’s work by others. In keeping with consistency, the zine is called 485, and set to feature 485 fan-art iterations of Willy’s recent work, sorted in chronicle order and printed as a ‘lo-fi’ fanzine.
In the spirit of bringing Instagram to life, perhaps it’s something we should all get on board with. You can get your copy of 865 (and 485) at London’s Dover Street Market, or online at IDEA books.
