"We love Instagram, it's a great place to promote photography, but we felt that we were not using it properly," Alexa Cassanos, senior director of public relations for the New Yorker, said of the decision.
Staff photographers will rotate ownership of the account "every few weeks or so," says Cassanos, beginning with Martin Schoeller, a staff photographer for The New Yorker since 1999. Over the past couple years, Schoeller has been photographing sets of identical twins, triplets and quadruplets around the country, and he will now begin sharing that work, as well as the processes for its production, with followers of the @newyorkermag Instagram account. His first photo appeared on the feed Wednesday afternoon.
It's not entirely uncommon for brands to bring on guest photographers for their Instagram accounts. London-based fashion house Burberry has brought on popular Instagram users to take photographs for the @burberry account during its last few runway shows; others, like eyewear manufacturer Warby Parker, have hired popular photographers to shoot events.