snapchat: abcnews - Matthew Ware

Published by Diane Inc of Melbourne, this photo zine features screenshots of the abcnews hashtag on Snapchat over a period of time. 

This is a book made up entirely of screen grabs made from Snapchat Stories of people I do not know.

"Out of the various social medias that keep popping up, Snapchat has aroused my curiosity the most. I initially downloaded the app because of a message I received from someone inviting me to join her on it. That someone is now my girlfriend and we have been together for a few years.

She still insists she invited me because she thought I might be entertaining, I still insist that she invited me because she was totally interested in me as a romantic partner. Joke's on her, look at us now!

Anyway, these were the early days of Snapchat, when it was utilised by forward thinking sexters and Silicon Valley start uppers and I'm sure they probably tended to blend into the same thing. I was watching the news so, creatively, I chose the handle Abcnews to be my Snapchat username.

I basically used it to flirt with my soon-to-be girlfriend for a while, and then deleted it as soon as online flirting was no longer necessary. Fast forward to a couple of years later, and out of boredom I downloaded the app again.

Much to my amusement, I had been added by hundreds of people - mostly from the United States, but (curiously) quite a few from the Middle East - thinking I was of course, ABC News. The images in this book are made by those people who added me, and thank goodness they did. They have been collected over the last year or so, through three broken phones, all of which no longer have screen grabbing capabilities." - M. Ware