Thoughts on Instagram
Instagram photo effects (and the multitude of other phone grading apps). What's not to like? You can take any photo and add a nice effect that makes it look like it was taken in another time, on another, far more imperfect camera. The effects can be rather pretty; adding a patina of age, style, mood and nostalgia. So why don't I like it? Because it's a cheap approximation of an interesting thing.
You see, I love these :
http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/09/colour-photographs-of-new-york-1950s-by-saul-leiter/
because they're a product of their time. The colour reproduction, grain, texture and imperfections were dictated by the technology of the era. They're timestamped by the mechanism which created them - what I would call the mechanical aesthetic.
At the time these were taken the subject and composition of the pictures was the focus (no pun intended). With time, this has layered with the time-capsule of the mechanical aesthetic to make them even more interesting. Not just because they're pretty, but because they belong to a different time. They have an integrity, and that's interesting.
Compare that with a photo treated with an Instagram effect. It's a modern photo with a thin veneer of colour grading, digital noise, artificial case-leakage streaks, and vignetting. On the surface, it does make a dull picture a little prettier. But the effect is static, it has no randomness, no element of chance. More to the point, it's pretending to be something it's not - it doesn't have that integrity. Most of all, the ease with which you can produce the effect means that it's ubiquitous. It goes from being something which can evoke a certain dreamy nostalgic mood to "Oh, that again." By association the effect is cheapened, and eventually lost - wherever you see it.
You could say that the root of all this is a dissatisfaction with perfection. Most digital compact cameras can produce a pretty much perfect rendition of what you see in front of you. Perfection can be good, but can also get rather boring. My analogy for this would be the transition from prog rock to punk. Boredom with musicianship and technical slickness gives way to roughness, texture, imperfection. Successive later bands try to emulate the early punk bands, but often fail because they emulate the superficial characteristics of the sound and aren't rooted in the particular set of circumstances of that era. It becomes a facsimile, without the integrity. (Yes, I'm suggesting early punk had integrity. How they'd hate that.)
What's the big deal? It's just a bit of fun! True, but here's where I reveal my motivations. I was brought up in the 70's and 80's. A lot of my early memories are tied up in photographs of just the type I've been talking about. Yellowed polaroids, dreamy focus caused by cheap plastic lenses, all that stuff. It means a lot to me, because those photos bring it all back - not just the subjects, but the physicality of the pictures themselves, their mechanical aesthetic. Nostalgia is a fragile thing, and seeing pictures manufactured to look like this all the time has an impact on that, even though they're a shorthand version of the real thing. The line between that time and contemporary artifice is blurred. To use a musical analogy again - you hear a record from your childhood you haven't heard in years, it triggers all kinds of memories and feelings. But hear that record every day, and it soon loses its potency.
Now I'm not suggesting we ban Instagram, or go around with "Down with Instagram, Nostalgia Killers!" placards. It IS just a bit of fun. In the end, prompted by my personal feelings about Instagram, my point is more of a general one; reminding people that trying to recreate the past in the present day is sometimes a good way to cheapen our memories of it. And that's why I don't like Instagram.
Quick update :
I thought it might be fun to point out what I consider one of today's interesting and possibly defining mechanical aesthetics. I wonder if in 30 years time people will look at this and go all misty-eyed; maybe even write a program to make their immaculate holograms full of square compression artifacts and resizing blur?
