If you lose Instagram tomorrow,how do you tell them?

I've had Instagram since Instagram came out.

I built it in Venezuela. That's where I was known — years of work, a real following. Some from the States too. Then I moved to Peru and worked there for years, and it grew way bigger than it had ever been. By 2019 I was heading to Argentina.

First day in Buenos Aires. Everything's fine. Bags not even unpacked. And a message comes through: someone is trying to access your account.

That someone was me.

So I tell them: it's me. I'm here. I just landed. And they come back with — no, you can't be, you're not in that country. I said I am. I'm standing in it. Right now. I'm not sure what they wanted. A photo of me at passport control.

So they send me a test instead. Answer these exactly, or that's the end of it. When was your last post? How long ago was it? What was in it? And I knew. Obviously I knew — it was a tattoo I'd done myself. I could have told them the machine I used. I still had the photos on my phone. I sent them the whole thing, everything they asked for, exactly right.

They took the account anyway. Full marks on the test. Still thrown out.

I fought it for about a week. Wrote to them again and again. Same reply every time, word for word, like nobody had ever read a single one of them.

And what went in the bin was years. Tattoos on rappers from Venezuela — some of them very well known over there. Rappers from Cuba. Baseball players. Work from three different countries, all in one place, all gone in an afternoon.

A load of photos from conventions — pieces I'd won with, and shots with other artists, people I'd travelled to work alongside. That's not just pictures. That's the proof of where you've been.

And one of those guys was a rapper. He got killed, a while after. I had photos of the two of us just hanging around at the shop, nothing special, just a normal day. There's no copy of those anywhere. And there's nobody left to ask for another one.

So I opened a new account. I didn't want to. But there's no other way to get your work out now. And then I opened a second one for Mala Vida as well. A spare. Just in case. That's what this does to you. You start keeping a spare.

And it wasn't even the first time. Same thing happened with my Facebook years before. Gone, same as that.

What can you do?

I picked her up from the airport at four. By six every account I had was gone.

I met her in August. She was here on holiday, we got on, she went back to the city. Months later I paid for her flight so she could come and stay a few days.

I picked her up from the airport at four. By six every account I had was gone.

Not locked. Gone. Someone was inside them, changing things, while I was driving her home.

I didn't say anything that first night. She'd just walked in the door. You don't lead with that.

Next morning I told her it was strange, that I'd been shut out of everything since the airport. She said that was weird. By the third day I'd stopped sleeping properly — I was messaging anyone I could think of, anyone who knew anyone, trying to find a way back in.

That's when she told me.

Her ex still reads her messages. He always has, since before they split. She'd bought a new phone thinking that was the end of it. It wasn't. He'd been watching her talk to me for weeks, and he knows how to get into things.

So he got into mine.

My personal account. The studio's. A third one. All three sat under the same Meta login, so they went together, in one stroke. Thousands of followers. Every piece I'd ever photographed. Every client who found me through it. Eight years.

I tried everybody. Nobody could get it back. It's still gone.

I'd never met the man. I'd never spoken to him. He didn't want anything from me — there was nothing to want. I was just standing next to her.