The iPhone photographer @misterver has built an audience on observing audiences. Anonymously handled, the Instagram account treats its 40k followers to a mishmash mosaic of local life, where unsuspecting people and patterns interplay in its pixelated purview of the islands.
Bystanders, from beachgoers to bridesmaids, are often found under this spectator’s gaze and routinely make for quirky and original compositions that are more focused on how throngs of people find their way to the beach rather than the beach itself.
In a technological age where everyone is equipped with a camera phone, this transfixed attention to the islands’ hustle and flow, and how it manufactures the destination itself, is refreshing.
Because, if we can speak candidly, the photos of Hawaiʻi that saturate social media are boring. Incredibly, gorgeously, immersively boring—the same summit ridge conquered, the same silhouetted palm trees burning through the days’ inevitable sunsets.
What is funnier, then, is that Waikīkī, real estate many are quick to scoff at for its sterilized “sameness,” is apparently rich with surprising scenarios of colors, textiles, and poses under @misterver’s discerning lens. In the following images, squarely set in the tourism capital of Hawaiʻi, @misterver snapshots both cater to and subvert one’s expectations.
— Matthew Dekneef
