The Instant Photographer

There were so many questions and topics covered during Nick's Instagram presentation that I find it hard to pick a starting place. At some point, an argument was made that because of a mobile photo applications ability to quickly apply analog film aesthetics to it's images that most people are considered photographers today and that they could possibly be in direct competition with professional photographers. I would agree with the first part of that statement. Every two minutes we take more pictures that the whole of humanity in the 1800's and with a billion photos on Instagram, there are a lot of people creating images at a rapid pace that are sharing and looking and quickly developing an eye for image creation. They are more rapidly on their way to becoming photographers because of this instant technology. However, I disagree with the idea that Instagram can put everyone's pretty good photo in direct competition with a professionals work.

As I see it, Instagram, Hipstamatic, Camera Bag and all of the other 23K mobile photo apps are tools that photographers should embrace and use when they are needed. The professional should be more than the person who "presses" a button on their phone. At minimum, photographers should role with the punches and adopt new technologies and paradigms in terms of evolving image technology. It may take some discipline on their part to keep up, but if they don't they might be working for an iPad one day. 

Some professional organizations and photographers currently use these apps in their work and publications. Getty Images, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated all have used mobile photo app images in their publications. Greg Foster used the Hipstamatic app to create a portrait that SI used over his Canon DSLR shots for a feature spread.

Regarding the scope of Nick's work and the direction it seemed to be heading, I think that Instagram alone might not be the best choice of topic for the documentary. Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram (and more recently Google's acquisition of Nik Software, the makers of the popular Snapseed app) ties it's use directly to social media. The app isn't about photography; it's about sharing. For many mobile photographers, photos are a means of exercising personal creativity. With filters and effects now offered in so many apps (again Hipstamatic, Camera Bag, 8mm), developers are exploring and creating these film looks for mobile photographers to uniquely express themselves. It has little to do with comparisons to actual film aesthetics in my opinion. There was a suggestion that Nick should interview a more diverse group of people for the project and I agree with this idea. Interviewing younger students who aren't photographers and middle-aged adults who use photo apps might provide a more panoramic view and understanding of the popular use of these filters. 

Concerning Instagram specifically, our questions should be less about the aesthetic choices of mobile device users and more about what Instagram can do with our images once they are shared. Let's look at their Terms of Use:

…By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the Instagram

Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid

and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add

to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content,

including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media

formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly

(“private”) will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.

…You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you on

or through the Instagram Services or otherwise have the right to grant the license

set forth in this section, (ii) the posting and use of your Content on or

through the Instagram Services does not violate the privacy rights, publicity

rights, copyrights, contract rights, intellectual property rights or any other

rights of any person, and (iii) the posting of your Content on the Site does not

result in a breach of contract between you and a third party. You agree to pay

for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of

Content you post on or through the Instagram Services.

Remarkably encompassing in their ability to take rights from photographers as a condition of using their service. (but how cool would it be to have your image used as a visual gimmick for some electronics chain store or pet food product viral campaign?)

Getting back to Nick's central question about why people use these vintage film filters, Karen Rosenberg had an insightful piece in the New York Times about the retro look that is enabled by apps like Instagram:

"Why do we want to tweak our photos so conspicuously? Why do we suddenly

want them to look as if they came from old analog cameras?…Nostalgia is

certainly a factor; parents, for instance, may want their children’s photographs

to look like the ones in old family albums…The photograph itself,

even an artily manipulated one, has become so cheap and ubiquitous that it’s

no longer of much value. But the experience of sharing it is, and that’s what

Facebook is in the business of encouraging us to do."

Another area we covered was the idea of digital images and the use of analog filters were somehow viewed as being false. Damian Sutton deemphasized the loss of indexicality of digital technology in his essay “Real Photography.” He explains:

Digital photography, and especially its apparently invisible manipulability,

destroyed the photograph’s privileged connection to the object. Without this

anchor to reality, the semiotic relationship seemed over-balanced towards the

iconic and the symbolic—i.e. representation. Yet the concerns expressed in the

1990s, that the digital image equates photography with fallibility and distrust,

now seem caught up in the historical moment of digital technology’s first real

flourishing; photography has always been “dubitative”. . . and this characteristic is

not the province of the digital image alone.

As Sutton argues, reading an analog photograph as connected to reality is an ideological function of photographs based on their indexicality. The perceived connection between analog photographs and reality has always been ideological, and so the shift from analog to digital is not as great a change when looking at the function of digital photographs. 

And finally, speaking in general about digital image making, Marshall McLuhan describes the impact of new media with the phrase “the medium is the message.” McLuhan’s “medium” is any extension of the human senses and he focuses on media such as print, photographs and telephones throughout his text Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). McLuhan’s “message” explains the way a new medium affects a culture, “for the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” He provides the railway as an example. This medium “did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human function, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure.” Similarly, digital photography “accelerates” or “enlarges” traditional photographic processes. 

Photographers should leverage this technology; not get replaced by it.