There are no shortage of people on Instagram looking to attract an audience by traveling the world. Whether they’re hoping to induce FOMO in the people who see where they’ve been or jealousy in their jet-setting lifestyles, it’s proved a winning strategy for a lot of people.
But there are only so many exotic locations we can see before these accounts start to seem like vacation photos from some distant relative. Yes, we can see that you’re in Paris, but what are you actually doing there?
Well, one of them can confidently say that she’s at all of these dream destinations for one specific purpose: to die.
For the past eight years, Stephanie Leigh has “died” in an ongoing series of Instagram photos.
As The Daily Mail reported , she’s amassed about 18,000 followers on her “stefdies” account by doing this, but focusing on that is only taking away from the reason why she does it.
And when you come across someone who “dies” in so many pictures, “why” is definitely a fair question.
For Leigh, it’s all about showing how precious life is and returning to the idea of a photo as simply a captured moment in time.
And that mission carries a big influence on her methods as she takes these photos.
As The Daily Mail reported , she doesn’t use any special cameras or equipment, nor does she plan out her shoots ahead of time.
As she said, “The early Stefdies photos were humor snapshots of my life – pretty much in times I was completely exhausted and amused by the situations I found myself in, and wanted to capture these moments in time.”
Leigh has “died” throughout her native United States, but has since taken her act to her new home in England and has kept it up wherever she goes in Europe.
As she told The Daily Mail , “I realized I wanted to continue putting something positive into the world, while at the same time using art to synthesize my feelings and thoughts regarding our impermanence on this earth. The official Stefdies slogan is ‘leave a mark’. I’d like to think I’m doing that.”
And while her work has certainly accomplished that in how much it amused her Instagram followers, she also makes an impression everywhere she visits.
You might think that onlookers would be concerned given the morbid nature of her photos, but she’s said she can count the number of people who’ve asked if she was OK on one hand.
Apparently, this was especially true of the photos she took in Paris.
She said that people barely noticed here there because they assumed she was “a crazy artist,” but that also made it one of her favorite places to shoot because nobody got in her way as she ran around the city to get the photos she wanted.
Indeed, some of her photos wouldn’t have been possible without the sense of comfort she seems to instill in people.
For instance, she said that entering this goat enclosure at the San Diego Zoo was no trouble because staff apparently thought she was one of them.
Since there’s no set end date for the Stefdies photos, Leigh has said that they’ve organically grown with her.
As she said, “Stefdies has always been a direct reflection of my desire to hold onto seemingly minor or huge moments of my life, that I knew would be washed away to the ravages of time or memory if I didn’t capture them in their proper moment.”
h/t: The Daily Mail
