A (slightly drunken) rant: Why I like Instagram

Posted on December 16, 2011

disclamimer: i’m a bit drunk, and kind of angry

Here’s why I like Instagram: It’s fun.

It encourages people to play with their camera. To experiment with the photos they take and the images they produce in a simple, playful way.

Its sole, joyful purpose is to encourage a bit of extra fun around the humble practice of taking a happy snap on your phone. Frankly, any piece of software which asks nothing more of its users than to take pleasure in an act of creativity gets my admiration and approval.

Do I care that the filters tend to reduce things to a relatively repetitive collection of colour palettes, dynamic ranges and ‘grain’ textures? No. I don’t.

Does it matter, as I’ve heard some people claim, that it can make mediocre composition, mundane subject matter or amatuerish technique look far better than it really should? Fuck no.

Anyway, let’s think about that – the idea that software is somehow cheating because it can sometimes, through luck or skill, make an average photo look good.

What the fuck?

The result is what counts, not how you get there. If the result looks appealing, interesting, arresting, provocative, or just plain pretty then it’s a good photo, regardless of the process that got you there. Never mind the tools – does the photo capture a moment? Does it move you? Is it interesting? That’s what counts.

So let’s get few things straight.

Instagram does not denigrate, cheapen, or harm in any way Photography with a capital P or Art with a capital A. If anything, it encourages people who may not have previously done so to think about things like colour, texture and composition. It makes taking happy snaps fun. And fuck you if you have a problem with that.

I was planning to write something much more eloquent but, frankly, i’m a but pissed. So to conclude:

Get over it. Instagram encourages people to be playful with phography in the same way that Twitter encourages people to be playful with language. The very limitations of the form inspire some extraordinary creativity. Sure, you get a lot of nonsense in there as well, but nobody ever promised any different.

It’s too easy to be cynical, dismissive, snide. To decry popular culture as some sort of lowbrow wannabe impersonation of real art. To say Instagram is fauxtography for hipsters, or Twitter is conversation for the socially retarded, or Justin Beiber makes songs for people who can’t handle real music.

If you want live in that world, go for it. Personally I’d like to try once in a while to be less cynical, and just be grateful for the fact that people seem to take pleasure from acts of creativity, no matter what tools they choose to employ.