Who says you can’t judge a book by its cover? Now you can also pose with it! The latest Instagram trend ‘#Bookface’ consists of taking a perfectly positioned photo with the cover of a book so that it extends over into real-life. The question is, what might such a trend reveal about our relationship to literature?

© Élodie Katan
First and foremost, “#Bookface” is a practice that allows users to experiment with their own creativity. Participants use books in a fun and clever way, turning an object into a prop for artistic expression. It takes serious time and effort to come up with the perfect photo, to perfectly line up the book cover with real-life models or objects. Some appear to be purely coincidental, while others are true works of art. In the age of rampant visual and social media in which everything starts with a picture, it makes sense that such a trend has blown up on Instagram. It can be done as a game, as a contest, or even used to promote a particular book or bookstore.
However, if we examine what “#Bookface” means for the purposes of literature, it is also a practice that empties the book of its original content. Fixating on the cover art exclusively means that the story no longer matters; the jacket must simply allow for original pictures. The inner pages may as well be blank! It comes as no surprise then that the viral trend originally started out with vinyl album covers instead of books. In the future, it could also expand into paintings, posters, etc. After the #Bookstagram effect shook up dull bookshelves with more colourful covers, will there be a #Bookface effect, with more and more book covers containing faces or other body parts?
References
1. https://phototrend.fr/2018/10/bookface-selfie-litteraire-instagram/
2.https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/fashion/oh-those-clever-librarians-and-their-bookface.html