Circles of Fire

The Guardian: 2 Years Later: The First Instagram Photo

instagram:

Two years ago today, we tested the first photo upload to an app we called Codename. Three months later, in October 2010, Instagram launched to the public.

Today, 1 year and 9 months later, over 50 million people have shared more than 1 billion photos on Instagram. […]

My favorite thing that anyone has ever said about Instagram is when my amazing hair/make-up stylist Kim Anderson said, “Instagram is Spanx for photography.” I actually think this is a pretty genius analogy, wisely countering many of the claims people make about Instagram “ruining” photography. Spanx reshapes a person’s body to match certain aesthetics — it does not change the underlying body. Instagram, similarly, instantly changes a photo’s aesthetics via filters. But the underlying composition still needs to be there. I honestly have no qualms about Instagram’s “debasement” of photography as some purist art form as I similarly have no qualms about Spanx’s ability to “cheat” some arbitrary beauty standard. I tend to think that more people taking pictures, with or without filters, is a good thing. In the same way that I think more people feeling good about how their bodies look, one way or another, is a good thing. But then, I guess I’m really just a populist at heart.

(Source: Guardian)