Photography, Hauntology and Faux-Vintage

Most damming for Hipstamatic and Instagram is that these apps tend to make everyone’s photos look similar. In an attempt to make oneself look distinct and special through the application of vintage-producing filters, we are trending towards photos that look the same. The Hipstamatic photo was new and interesting, is currently a fad, and it will come to (or, already has?) look too posed, too obvious, and trying too hard (especially if the parents of the current users start to post faux-vintage photos themselves). -- Nathan Jurgenson for The Society Pages

I like vintage photography -- I mean actual, vintage film photography -- but hate the "faux vintage" look that Hipstamatic and Instagram offer. If that makes me luddite, so bet it.

an actual Kodak Instamatic shot

The entire multi-part article is worth a read. I'm not entirely averse to Photoshop: I use PS myself, and have played with the levels, temperature and contrast of photos to give them a different look, but it's the downloadable apps that simulate the look of different stock films with a click that really bothers me, particularly when they're paired with thoroughly modern photography. Who is this supposed to be fooling?

This is a real Polaroid

Simon Reynold's says hauntology (a concept originally conceived by French philosopher, Jacques Derrida ) is "all about memory's power (to linger, pop up unbidden, prey on your mind), and memory's fragility (destined to become distorted, to fade, to functionally disappear.)"  It's easy to mourn this as the loss of traditional photography -- and I do a lot of that -- but as these effects become commonplace, even expected, they become divorced from their original source and less a part of our collective memory.