Originally posted by Na Horuk Why is Instagram so popular? And why are there so many other apps and filters mimicking it, trying to cash in on the same silly styles?
And why the hell is lomography so popular!
The shallow answer is ultimately simple - a segment of the market enjoys certain styles, and it makes sense for a photo company to try to cater to it. The deeper answer, why do people like miscoloured, softened, overexposed jpegs.. well, I guess nobody can say for certain. It has to do with hiding imperfections, giving room for fantasy, and adding a (fake) feeling of nostalgia, authenticity.
Instagram is popular for the same reasons as Social Media and Photography. Every pre-teen and teen is empowered with a voice and identity (and a cell phone) that they can share text, photos, and video with friends and strangers.
They may have grown up looking at the aesthetic of fading color prints, slides, and polaroids, and although some of us still shoot film, most households do not. So there is a retro coolness that has more expression and style than a clean, cold, straight digital image.
Personally, I'm not into Instagram, but someone else posted one of my photos and within a day it got nearly 400 likes. I had never had that kind of 'exposure' before and the positive reinforcement, especially for youth, must be huge.
Why Lomography? I teach both a digital course that requires high school students to provide their own DSLR and a film course that requires an FSLR. Most parents are not willing to invest in either repairing their old FSLR or buy a used or new one because they do not understand the value of it. (They will invest hundreds, however, to upgrade a DSLR). So an uber cheap plastic FILM camera, that a student can afford on minimum wage, that they don't have to worry about losing or breaking, is not only affordable, but is a hip almost counter-cultural low tech statement. It also has the charm in its imperfection and the digital generation is reconnected to art, where the image is more of a discovery and reliant on the photographer, not the technology where the jpeg is engineered to create the magic. My first medium format was the Yashica Mat TLR, but for around $60 you can get a new 120 film interchangeable lens Lomography camera.
In my high school curriculum, coming from the old school, I think students should take B&W Film in a darkroom before advancing to Color Digital with Lightroom. But if I enforced that, I would reduce my enrollment and lose a majority of students. Instead, most students enter class with Mom or Dad's DSLR, and then the advanced ones become curious and want to learn about the darkroom and what is this thing called film. They are color natives, so to them, black and white is special and magic.
We live in a golden age of photography and video and I think it's awesome that there are so many options, styles, and means of exhibiting and sharing publicly and privately. And although Apple sells more 'cameras' than anyone else, I appreciate that there is enough diversity of needs and styles that we don't live in a world without film, digital, crop and full frame sensors, pinhole and large format, and even toy cameras that work and are taken seriously.