Instagram is not just a social network in which posturing and selfies are stylized. The platform serves as an expression vehicle for people who have photographic, creative and even compilation concerns. Some accounts are like small object museums. Sometimes some bumps into them without knowing very well how.
It's what happened to me a few months ago. Looking for images by a certain location I came to a photo of a sewer cover . Curiosity made me want to know where it came from and I discovered that this was not an isolated snapshot. It came from an account that had the suggestive name of Portales del Inframundo and that served as a repository for all kinds of sewer covers, lighting, etc.
I recognize that entering the profile and seeing all of its mosaic photos was quite hypnotic. It is as if in a single glance you have access to all crop circles or a large collection of mandalas. The account houses almost 3,000 images with 'portals of the underworld' from numerous places on the planet of different shapes, colors, drawings and sizes.
"I am aware that Portals of the Underworld is a very peculiar gallery and that was the main idea when creating it. I wanted to publish something that made a difference. And so, in one of my trips, I discovered a sewer cover with the name of the city I was visiting. Then the idea of photographing portals that had the name of the sites I was visiting began to haunt me, "explains Sole Rissi, creator of Portals of the Underworld .
"Then, observing, I discovered that each portal, even the one that does not have a name, had its particularity and I could not stop looking at them. I walk down the street and slow down or stop to photograph portals and many look at me strangely. But is that ... have you seen them? They are all different !!! Observe them !!! How can there be so much variety? ", asks this creator of Argentine content.
For this atypical instagramer are not only sewer or lighting covers, but much more. Putting them all together the truth is that you can better perceive that magic they hide. "I've always seen them as objects that participate in dream processes. Just as mirrors can move you to another dimension or towers, domes and steeples can transport you to a higher world, the portals of the underworld are passages to an underworld. The truth is that everyone could somehow lead to parallel worlds, "he adds.
A whole world before our feet
At first the images that were uploaded to the account were only from Rissi herself. The author has a job she can do remotely, which gives her the ability to travel while working. So you can travel around the world discovering new places and also curious tapas. This activity has brought him some funny anecdotes, such as a 12-year-old boy asking him in Wales if he was playing Pokémon Go .
Little by little, the small snapshot collection has been expanded thanks to a new collaborator. "Jorge Sanz Robles, who manages @kazanjsr joined the project and does not stop providing curious and unpublished copies. And the gallery has been filled with real portals, figurative portals and even representative portals," he says.
Given such a large number of samples, they have even begun to establish their own classification: "there are nominative portals, portals of companies from different sectors, historical portals, decorative portals, those that I am forgetting and those that are still unknown," says Sole.
The most precious portals of the collection
With a collection of this caliber, the author has difficulty choosing a single favorite. "I would not know how to give them a preferential position, but just to list a few ... I could say that I have seen very curious portals in Belarus . For example, at the same opera or at the Minsk train station, the portals are allusive to those entities and you will see the design of the building forged on the portal, "he recommends.
Sole also believes that in Madrid "there are very cool portals" and varied. Near the Prince of Vergara Street there is one that caught his attention as an "activist." It is one of the Canal de Isabel II that invites you to join the "Water Challenge" . He also mentions the legendary hidden entrance door to the Umbraesphere , the curious plaque of the artist Eames Demetrios located in the Plaza de la Luna .
Another favorite of the capital is one of the Sacramental of San Isidro that they have baptized as 'Necropolitan portal' . "It is cool to rename them. As is the case of that portal that Jorge found in Israel and on which there was a black cat. It was a guarded portal ... unparalleled. We call it 'apologetic' ."
The content creator ensures that "you even learn history by watching portals". Another of its most precious tapas is that of Titograd , "which was what it was called during the stage of the former Yugoslavia to Podgorica , the capital of Montenegro ." Finally, mention the " portal '3 in 1' in the golden gallery of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in London . Through it you could see 111 meters down and the portal itself was a mirror that reflected the dome above from my".
Despite the incessant work of collecting and collecting the author and her collaborator, their number of followers does not do them justice and for now they only have more than a hundred followers. Rissi says that they have not yet received the interest of any brand or advertiser, but does not rule out that at any given time the Underworld Portals end up materialized in a book or even encyclopedia.
While that arrives (or not) we can always continue browsing the Instagram account of Portales del Inframundo or go down the street looking at the ground to discover new and mysterious specimens. As long as our smartphones and their monopolization of our attention allow us, of course.
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