Instagram Mining: whitehouse meets popefrancis

With world leaders and heads of state now standard fixtures on Instagram, I was curious about your take on each version of the Obama-Pope, Pope-Obama meet up. The image up top is the whitehouse version followed by the Pope’s.

If they are plenty different in style and composition, I’m most interested in how they use the Resurrection painting in the Pope’s library, The San Francesco al Prato Resurrection by Perugino.

Not having looked at a lot of pics from the Vatican library where the Pope meets many foreign visitors (except for this awkward shot with Putin), it’s hard to speak to the choice of framing. It is interesting, though, how the White House floats the ascending Jesus over Obama’s head while the Vatican aligns Obama with the very earthbound sleeping Roman soldier in the lower right corner.

In terms of who’s up and who’s down, by the way, Politico’s coverage points out that the Pope leads Obama in American approval ratings by 76 – 42.

You might notice also, by the way, that the Vatican could stand to bone up on spelling the President’s name.

(photo 1: unattributed. whitehouse/Instagram. photo 2: unattributed. popefrancis/Instagram. photo 3: PD-Art photographs at Wikipedia)