Photographers, I want to hear from you
Has Instagram changed the way you engage with photography?
I want your opinion.
I’m working through some new ideas, and I hope you can give me a hand. Many of you know that social media’s effects on artmaking and attention are one of my hobbyhorses. For those of you new to FlakPhoto Digest, you might appreciate this:
I caught up with photographer Jason Langer a few weeks ago. Do you know his work? We talked about various things, and he left me thinking about the negative impacts a platform like Instagram has on artists, artmaking, and photography. Years ago, we flocked to IG without really questioning it, and I’ve been thinking about how photographers and artists feel about their experience all these years later.
My conversation with Jason made me realize something: Instagram has trained a generation to spend less time looking at (and seeing) the images in front of us. Instagram rewards scrolling, not looking. Well, not close, careful looking, anyway. I mentioned this to Jason, and he sent me this reply:
I would go one step further and say that our relationship with photography changed once it became scrollable. We spent more time with photographs when we could only interact with them on walls and in boxes or drawers — one at a time — or in books, page by page. Scrolling encourages looking for the next best dopamine hit.
He’s right. I’m not proud to admit it, but I find myself practically racing through my IG feed some mornings. Why? I’m not sure. It’s a habit and a bad one. On reflection, I was reminded of this David Lynch video from years ago. It’s certainly relevant:
Jason inspired me, and I want to write more about how Instagram changes our engagement with photography — as practitioners and spectators.
Photographers, if you have any thoughts — on how IG has changed how you look at pictures, make your photo work, or if social media has influenced your practice in another way — I want to hear from you. I'd like to include quotes from imagemakers about the platform's pros and cons. Please tell me what you think.
Feel free to leave me a note in the comments or email me directly. You can find me here: flakphoto@gmail.com. Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!
One more thing…
I’ve been meaning to read Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish for quite a few years, and I finally picked up a copy. It’s excellent and something I know many of you will appreciate — Do check it out when you have time.
Okay, that’s all for now. Take care and talk soon!
Instagram was great in the beginning. I jumped over from 500px and I enjoyed the social aspect that came with interacting with other photographers. But now that everyone with an iPhone and an Instagram account is a “photographer”, my opinions on social media have changed. I’ve had a camera since I was 10, a masters in fine art photography, and a 12 year career in commercial photography before digital ever happened. Galleries and print were the only ways to get your work out there. Now I’m getting back to that, the true feel of photography. I shoot film again, focus on my website, submitting to galleries, and printing books. I decided that instead of giving something else all my energy, I would just make my own magazine. And that’s how I ended up here. I started writing and sharing photos, and in about a month my magazine will go to print. So much more rewarding than social media. I still look through instagram occasionally. YouTube is better for inspiration and knowledge in my opinion. What social media makes you forget is that we survived long before it was ever here, and there are countless professional photographers who have great careers and don’t use social media. Now that I am focused on my own projects off social media, I don’t even have time for it anymore, it has become secondary, if even a consideration at all. Just shift your focus to your work and your ideas, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The biggest lie of IG in its current iteration is that if you consume more, you can create more. But the reality is that the more you consume, the less you create… the less you live.
For the artist, the photographer, it is taking the very foundation it needs to create and share the work. Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “We photo-reporters are people who supply information to a world in a hurry, a world weighted down with preoccupations, prone to cacophony, and full of beings with a hunger for information and needing the companionship of images.” How can we supply the world with images when the pressure to be in a hurry and create so much content catch up with anyone? Less attainable in a feed full of ads and sponsored posts that drive the viewer OUT of the app and into a checkout page. It is requiring more from the artist to pause, retract and THEN come back to the platform to engage.
It promotes disassociation and mindless scrolling because we are taking all of the noise in and overwhelming our systems without processing it.
Photography was a lifestyle. Taking photos with a camera was just the first step in a series of steps to create photos. Developing, scanning, enlarging and printing went hand in hand. There was a dedication to a handful of images and a story rather that excess.
Instagram robs me of the possibility to engage with work that moves me. I prefer to engage with the author offline and will often opt to buy their photo book and meditate in a body of work. IG will never replace a museum visit or a gallery exhibit in real life.