Much ado about Instagram, part 1

Source: acid-sky.tumblr.com via Clodiney on Pinterest

Ever since Facebook spent 1 billion to acquire Instagram, it seems everyone must do a post on it. I'm pretty sure that if you have a photoblog and don't do an Instagram post, then you are automatically chosen to represent your district in the reaping. Since my archery skills aren't what they were at my 12th birthday party, I'm afraid I'm going to have to do a post.

First, a disclaimer: I have actually never used Instagram, so my knowledge of it comes from reading, from Pinterest, and from Shep, who cuts my hair.

So, what is Instagram? kidding. sort of.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's two things: 1. a free app to make your crappy cell phone photos look vintagey and 2. a visually-based social network

A lot of people I have read tend to focus only on the first part, and here's the gist of what they say:
Instagram gives digital photos the look of analog photos, often exaggerating flaws such as lens aberrations, fading, and color casts because either:

a ) We live in a soulless digital world, walking among the decades-old ruins we inherited from poststructuralist theorists, eviscerated of every last shred of analog "authenticity." Those tortured, yellowed pixels are the visual manifestation of our 21st century mal du siècle. 

OR 

b )  We "filter" our lives, so Instagram helps us enact some sort of "meta-commentary" by adopting a set of aesthetic commonplaces for various declensions of nostalgia. According to the Atlantic, for example, the Nashville filter is for "ironic nostalgia," the 1977 filter is for "in-your-face nostalgia" and the Lord Kelvin filter is for "actual nostalgia."

OR simply, 

c ) Cell phone photos are by nature ugly, and Instagram helps them look cool. 

One of the problems with choice "a" is that it tends to ignore the long history of nostalgia. We didn't suddenly get nostalgic when computers were invented. Trust me, I'm restraining myself from giving the entire history of nostalgia here. I spent 5 years putting together an exhibit called "Nostalgia & Technology" and I'm writing a book on the topic that deals with everything from sewing machines to cell phones (if you're inclined to read academic stuff, feel free to check out my article in the Journal of Popular Culture. It's fairly readable, considering the genre.) But where was I? Oh yeah, the problem of assuming that we suddenly got nostalgic. Did anyone out there see Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris? (If you didn't, you should, it's very charming). Was I the only one who was not shocked to learn that someone in the roaring twenties might think that the belle époque was better (and so on, into the past)? We love past-ness. Choice "a" only gets interesting when you get into specifics—you know, compare/contrast with all of the other historical examples of nostalgia.

Choice "b" ventures even more into academic territory, and I have to admit that I would love to read someone who has really developed that "take" on it. In her Buzzfeed article (my favorite so far), Amanda Petrusich starts to go there. When people get into "meta" this and "meta" that, there's always the danger of completely losing your audience, or coming across as pretentious, or looking like a grad student who just deciphered Frederic Jameson's obscurantist prose for the first time.

Choice "c" is what most people, including Instagram (co)founder Kevin Systrom. In part 2 (next time), I'll get into some of the things I learned from watching the 46 minute interview on Youtube. Until then, check out Stuff Instagramers Say:

Film nostalgia

9 times Lucas

top row (left to right): 1. as shot 2. Agfa Optima 400 3. Kodak Ektachrome 64 pro middle row 4. Fujichrome Velvia 100 5. Kodak Ultra Color 400UC 6. Fuji Superia 800 bottom row: 7. Kodak Portra 160 NC 8. Polaroid Transfer 9. xpro C41 to E6 (LB04)

Earlier this month, I talked about digital versions of cross processing, and introduced the post with the question "When is the wrong color the right choice?" This led to some interesting comments about darkroom processing vs. digital processing and about the manipulation of color in either case. As a sort of experiment, before I left work today, I took a photo of my son, Lucas, silhouetted against a colorful art installation, and digitally altered it according to various film types and/or processes. I "processed" the original photo with NIK Color Efex Pro because the program faithfully emulates the contrast, grain, and color properties of a few dozen beloved film stocks—a digital approximation based on careful study (actual grain sampling, for example) of the analog originals. Strange, how I find myself learning more about the variation of film types now that I no longer use them. I had my favorite films, but I never took the same photo with a dozen different types for the sake of comparison. To do so now is really an exercise in nostalgia—especially as more and more films are discontinued.

A closer look at Velvia (#4 on grid)

Homage or Death Knell? Is that really the question?
Last August, I did a post about the disappearance of local orchards and the things that have replaced them: "Orchard" Elementary, "The Orchards" Shopping plaza, and so on. I begin to wonder if the digital reproduction of film isn't the same type of dual-edged homage—respect + replacement.

The faux polaroid version

But I have seen enough media hype to be wary of "the death of...." narratives. The number of hyperbolic photo magazine articles about digital replacing or not replacing film rivals the frequency of "get great abs" covers on men's magazines. The digital vs. film debate evokes strong opinions, but like the ab routines, it gets monotonous and tiresome pretty fast.

The grainy and gritty Superia 800

So what is the question?
In the context of this month's theme, the digital replication of different films made me appreciate the number of "right" answers possible to the question of color. The variations in color film emulation made me think about other color/contrast/grain (or any other selection of variables) recipes for digital color. The Color Efex software is largely based on darkroom techniques, but it also includes purely invented digital effects with names like "Duplex" and "Monday Morning." Similarly, Photoshop actions with names such as "Lord of the Rings" and "Daily Multi Vitamin" might be the digital equivalent of film stocks. I am quite surprised, in fact, that Fuji, Kodak, and the like have not got into the business of marketing digital "film" in the form of actions. Some have viewed memory cards as digital film, but the comparison ignores the identity of film types. Some memory cards may be faster than others, but the card won't change the look of the photo. Digital cameras offer "effects" and digital processing allows for infinite variations, but memory cards have no real identity. If film nostalgia stays strong among those shooting digital, maybe film companies will manufacture memory cards with unique in-card processing characteristics. Maybe one day people will have strong feelings about the saturation and contrast they get with a certain brand of memory card...

The unretouched original

Conclusions
I don't have many (other than I really should start going to be before 3 a.m.), but thinking about film nostalgia has led me to some ideas:

• As a big fan of "The Five Obstructions," I like the idea of creating sets of actions as a self-imposed creative constraint.
• I love the devotion to film emulation that I see in ColorEfex, but I also like the idea of creating fixed digital variations that have nothing to do with the darkroom.
• Current digital effects tend toward the dramatic or trendy, but I wonder if subtle effects will become equally important as digital matures.
• I don't know what "the question" is, but I am pretty sure that it is not "film or digital?"