News just to hand…
Hipstamatic that coolest of cool iPhone applications has had to lay off five of its eleven employees according to the British Journal Of Photography. The BJP reports that Hipstamatic
“is facing financial hardship, as the app has disappeared from the top charts on Apple’s App Store especially since Instagram’s rise in popularity. Hipstamatic is said to have four million users, when Instagram has reached 80 million users in less than two years. Recently, Facebook acquired Instagram for close to $1bn.”
Now there is a little bit of debate over on my Facebook page about this, with a few respected photographers weighing in on the fact that in keeping with the uncertain future of Hipstamatic that the future of their proposed ‘Foundation For Photojournalism” which was to support “the next generation of photographic storytellers using smartphones with Hipstamatic to tell and broadcast their tales.” may dissolve.
I certainly found it quite ironic that Hipstamatic is no longer hip but one of my colleagues has pointed out that anything that has photojournalistic intentions and is failing can’t be a good thing for the industry. On the other hand another of my colleagues has pointed out that Hipstamatic is merely a software company that developed an iPhone app which is pretty meaningless.
Now of course I never like to stir things up…but I think there is a fundamental issue here that both of my esteemed colleagues might be missing… And that is that the longevity of any of the so called ‘new’ innovations in photography seems to last about as long as hoola hoops and yo-yos have in the various decades that they have resurfaced.
And in regards to the larger question of Fauxtography and using an app… well you can point a camera in any direction now days and you apply an app like Hipstamatic but if the content of the image is not predicated with some emotion, thought or concept then what you are getting is exactly the same snapshot that everyone else does and just making it look better with an app…Photojournalism to me is the recording of events with an informed viewpoint and angle and I personally try and make my pictures and my words count for something….
So if Hipstamatic were/are serious about setting up a Foundation for Photojournalism then I would say it would be a sad thing if they were not able to proceed… and even though Hipstamatic is merely an app it really doesn’t matter as long as the photos are strong enough to stand on their own minus the wizzbangery…The unfortunate truth is most people are just using Hipstamatic and Instagram to make snapshots…And thats valid as long as people don’t confuse a snapshot with an important well thought out document…
Whats interesting to me about both Hipstamatic and Instagram is that I have a book on Polaroid photography that was published in 2004. My flatmate Tommy Trinh who alas has never experienced the visceral pleasure of working with that magic medium immediately summarised the photographs in the book as ‘looking like Instagrams’. Obviously this is where the developers found their inspiration.
Now as someone that doesn’t even own an iPhone finding that I might already have missed the boat with Hipstamatic doesn’t unduly concern me…. Of course it does make me a bit unhip I guess so just to prove I am not I did shoot todays portrait of Tommy Trinh on his phone using Hipstamatic…Somehow though I don’t see what all the fuss is about…just another storm in the hip pocket I think…
I guess I will just wait it out until someone develops something really new in the world of photography…
Lisa Hogben Photojournalist 
I enjoyed your piece very much Lisa. It reminded me of a quote by Charles Dickens from his novel, A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Whether one is a dedicated photojournalist struggling to be heard, or an art photographer striving to make sense of this world we live in, now is surely the best of times and the worst of times. We have so much technology at our disposal and so many and such a diversity of channels through which to reach a public (the best of times) and yet there has never been such a glut of work ranging from the superlative to downright trash competing for an already over-sated audience (the worst of times).
For a while, I railed at those neophytes who mass-produce craftless images of their mudane lives, ignoring all the lessons that generations of photographer craftsmen and women have painstakingly learned and artfully put into practise. And I railed even harder at the gallery owners and curators and publishers who encouraged this degradation of the craft by legitimising this artless work in galleries and publications. But then I realised that the underlying motive of the entrepreneurs is often money rather than art; and “new and different” will always outsell “more of the same” provided that the paying public can be convinced that the “new” is art – something that is easier to do than one might think since very few people are discerning enough to formulate their own opinion on the subject and look to others to inform them.
In time, the work of artless amateurs will be recognised for what it is and will be forgotten; but that is of little comfort for those who are struggling to produce quality art today and finding little enthusiasm for it in the public arena. But the real artists will always stick to their guns; because that is all they know. And therefore, I concur with your sentiment: “I personally try and make my pictures and my words count for something….”
What a lovely comment… You are such a great writer I am honoured by your presence here…Thankyou…
Excellent piece. As a retired Media Literacy teacher, your observations ring so true. We live in an age of such diverse new forms of mass media, just aching to be used to used to create & express ideas & emotions, yet we still fail to teach those who have access to them how to use them effectively. Just because you know how to snap a picture doesn’t mean you know how to compose a photograph. or create an effective & moving piece of digital art. Apps are tools to produce form, but rules of composition and intelligent & creative choice of subject still resides with the photographer.
As to the Hipstamatic app it is an example of what I call Necro-media. Necro-media can be, among other things, the use of the codes & conventions of an earlier form of mass media by a new mass media technology. As you point out, in this case the Polaroid codes & conventions have been simulated/re-created by the Hipstamatic app.