The social networking platform Instagram has affected our visual culture in many profound ways. It allows photographic images to be created and disseminated instantly, by anyone, for free, and provides a structure of organization that sorts images in such a way that interested parties the world over are likely to see them. This sorting system revolves around the use of “hashtags;” a colloquialism that refers to visible metadata tags that users create to describe an image. The democratization of images has positive and negative consequences. The benefit, of course, is more people having access to absorb and create visual culture. The Instagram model allows people from different cultures to relate to one another through imagery. Older models of sharing visual culture have inherent barriers to segments of the population. Art museums, for example, usually have an entrance fee, and the art often requires a significant level of prior education. The drawback of the Instagram model is the devaluing of information, objectivity, and intention. When images can be made instantly and without cost, the psychological value that the creator places in each image inevitably is less than in a finite medium, such as a roll of film. The hashtags that accompany an image are often very illustrative of the value the creator attributes to it. In this digital exhibition, I am investigating the representation of refugees on Instagram. Refugees are an especially interesting demographic, because they have been visually represented in familiar patterns throughout history. This representation, particularly through photography, has often limited the idea of a refugee into a very narrow condition. The representation of refugees on Instagram is very democratic, with all voices being heard, but it is also very abbreviated, with only very shallow ideas of the refugee being represented. The images in the following pages were taken from Instagram, and they serve to illustrate my thesis. I have sought our images that are representations of perceived refugees, as well as images that are made by perceived refugees. Click the "Browse Exhibits" tab above to look through the images.