The Faces of Facebook

There are more than 1.2 billion Facebook profiles in this full-screen mosaic, so many that all you see is colored pixels. But zoom in on them and the faces become recognizable. They are the faces of people young and old: men and women, European, Asian and African. Natalia Rojas has used these profile photos to create a remarkable and fluid world map. Instead of a map of countries, it is a chart of people and how they present themselves. It is only by seeing so many portraits in one go that we realize the stereotypical ways in which the world's citizens present themselves on Facebook: as a macho man with muscled torso, as the happy couple in front of a twinkling Christmas tree, as the happy tourist pretending to push over the leaning Tower of Pisa, as Super Mario from the eponymous video game, as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or some other star soccer player. Rojas's photo collage (ordered chronologically by date of signing up) confidently and accurately demonstrates that on Facebook we are not who we are, but who we long to be – and the person that we want other people to see in us. Dreamed identities – that's the trademark of Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)