About

7 Days, 7 Photos refers to a Facebook game in which people challenge each other to post a black and white picture that "describes their life" once a day for seven days. Each day, the participant challenges another, similar to the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Origin

The earliest known instance of the "7 Days, 7 Photos" challenge was posted by blogspot user jenlap-artslifetravelandme on January 28th, 2010. They wrote:

"Beginning today will be the 1st annual 7 days, 7 photos. I will be posting one photo everyday for 7 days.

THE RULES:
Only photos taken that day can be posted and I can't go way out of my routine to get them! Basically try to make the ordinary, extraordinary or different. For all of you readers, if you'd like to do this with me please do and post your comments of how you're having road blocks, enjoying it or anything.

MY FIRST ROAD BLOCK:
It looks like there's a blizzard happening outside. Photo to be posted tonight!"

Spread

On January 8th, 2012, the website Not Bad for a Girl^[3] published a series of photographs entitled 7 Days. 7 Photos (examples below).

The earliest public version of the "Black and White" Photo Challenge was posted on April 19th, 2015 by Facebook^[5] user Roberta Steele Ruud. In the caption, she wrote, "Seven days, seven black and white photos of your life.
No people. No explanation. Challenge a new person every day. This is my day 4 of 7."

The following year, on July 31st, 2016, the website Bukge^[2] published an article entitled "Challenge Accepted in Facebook With Black White Picture/Photo." The post outlined the challenge as it was going around on "Facebook":memes/sites/facebook. They wrote:

"Why are People Posting their Black and White Photos on Social Media

Many people in facebook are posting black & white picture with a tag line 'challenge accepted' , many of you are confused how and what is this for and how people are doing this , Now answer is

Facebook is not doing this and just like facebook fake privacy news it is another type of fun stuff spread by one user to another and one by one this is going viral , this is a new thread by Facebook user just like they had temporary profile picture thing ' this is the same exact thing where people are posting black and white profile pictures with the tag line 'challenge excepted.'"

On October 25th, 2017, Slate^[4] published an article about a revival of the trend entitled "Seven Days, Seven Photos of Pensive Cats." The article's author reacted negatively to people publishing the photographs. They wrote, "The pretentious 'challenge' taking over Facebook is neither a challenge nor a good meme."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References