Do you remember how your #misplacedchairgallery came about?
Around 2008, I wanted to create a new apartment as a place on Foursquare. In reference to my chair photo exhibition in the hallway of my apartment - I had been collecting these photos for a few years at that point - I called the location "Misplaced Chair Gallery". A few years later, I turned this into the #misplacedchairgallery on Instagram.
To date, there are 4524 posts for your # – why do you think #misplacedchairgallery has become so successful?
Maybe it's contagious that I have so much fun with the #misplacedchairgallery myself, both with the pictures and the titles. But apart from that, chairs are a popular motif and I'm in good company with #thatsmyseatbro, #chairmuse, #chairswithstories and many others. Incidentally, I struggled a bit with myself before I used the hashtag on Instagram - I knew that my beloved concept would no longer belong to me alone. After the first few posts, I briefly regretted it. Then someone tagged me from their vacation in Turkey because they found a chair and remembered the Misplaced Chair Gallery. I thought: how great is that, someone is going to a place I've never been to before and I'm somehow still in their luggage. So I'm very happy that the #misplacedchairgallery has now grown so much and, above all, is international.
Have you ever taken one of your photo objects home with you?
No, never.
Is there something that attracts or amuses you about lonely chairs?
Bruce Hannah, professor of industrial design, put it very nicely: “Chairs … are kind of like placeholders for human beings. … Yet when the people sit in the chair it disappears. The person replaces the chair.” When you see a chair abandoned on the street, the person is far more noticeably absent than when you trip over a lamp or a table. That fascinates me.
Where do you find the most chairs and do you think this is more of an urban phenomenon?
I walk a lot and the chairs are almost always found by chance on the way to work, shopping or while jogging. In the city, you just put an unwanted chair outside the door and hope that someone takes it. In the country, of course, there are fewer chairs lying around.
Now I would like to know your opinion as an expert: If you were to write a paper about misplaced chairs, what would be the most surprising finding?
Almost all chairs disappear from the streets at some point. Only these Gunde folding chairs from IKEA are always left standing around forever. A product that no one wants to throw away and no one wants to receive as a gift. I would like to put a consumer researcher on that.
What Hertje recommends:
- Episode 139 of the fantastic podcast “99% Invisible” – “Edge of your seat”
- @all_great_tags
- her Flickr gallery
