Lets call “Aesthetics Instagram” a specific form of aesthetics that is relevant on the most used channel for images nowadays: Instagram. Lev Manovich, a prominent philosopher of the digital, defined 3 powerful categories that will help you better understand Instagram: Casual Photography, Professional Photography, and Designed Photography (Instagramism).
Introduction
Instagram is at once an application, a social network and a photo and video sharing service. It was founded in 2010 by the American Kevin Systrom and the Brazilian Michel Mike Krieger. Ten years after its creation, Instagram now has 1 billion active users [1], who share 95 million of photographs per day, in a universe composed of several tens of trillions of images showing a complex aesthetics, the Aesthetics of Instagram [2].
In such an enormous jungle of images (and videos…), can we imagine to apprehend Instagram, can we try to understand it? This is far from certain, because each user sees a different version of Instagram, depending on his preferences and interests.
Nevertheless, two references seem to us to clarify Instagram as a image-based phenomenon. On the one hand, a fairly detailed study by Lev Manovich provides us with a first typology of the images shared on Instagram. On the other hand, André Gunthert’s general reflection, which targets the totality of social networks that use images, allows us to approach Instagram’s images as conversational images, thus clarifying their social role.
Lev Manovich on Instagram and Contemporary Image
Aware of the magnitude of the phenomenon and the potentially infinite faces of Instagram, Lev Manovich [3] (with his team at the Cultural Analytics Lab) has tried to untangle the platform with a methodology that combines art history, photography aesthetics, but above all, computational analysis and data science.
In a study published online [4] between 2015 and 2016, the team led by Manovich analyzed a corpus of 16 million images posted on Instagram covering the period 2012-2015, and including, among others, the cities of Bangkok, Berlin, Moscow, New York, London, São Paulo, Tokyo, Kiev and Taipei.
Manovich’s study is presented as “qualitative” [5], but also, we can say, has a quantitative aspect that is expressed in a variety of statistical indications. Manovich indicates that most of the images shared on Instagram present ordinary moments in the lives of the millions of people who use the social network. This type of image of ordinary life is opposed to another type of imagery present in the network: that of “stars”, celebrities and commercial companies, images indicated as “strategic” by Jonathan Schroeder [6]. The latter kind of images, as Manovich points out in an article by Camila Souza Araujo [7], have a disproportionate number of likes and shares, which in our opinion reveals the commercial side of Instagram: paid accounts maximize their presence in the network.
Aesthetics Instagram: styles, subjects, techniques
As may have been expected, Manovich finds that the themes, styles and techniques associated with the shared images are a function of the social, aesthetic and cultural values of each demographic group in particular. However, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between images of ordinary life and “strategic images”. Strategic images disguise themselves, passing themselves off as images of ordinary life, increasing their effectiveness when it comes to selling products and services, which is their sole purpose.
If ordinary life photos, which correspond to what Richard Chalfen called “home fashion” [8] in 1987, dominate Instagram, they do not succeed in clarifying Aesthetics Instagram. The latter manifests itself in other photographic cultures, such as portraits, selfies, food photographs, natural landscapes and cityscapes. Thus, the same object, the same situation, depending on how the image was made, can be added to images of “ordinary life” or it can be part of specific photographic cultures. Also, as Manovich points out, a peculiarity of the shooting, of the framing, can either be part of a composition error by an distracted amateur, or belong to the production of a very sophisticated photographer who mobilizes the aesthetics of references such as Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, or Wolfgang Tillmans [9].
Instagram: the kingdom of visual aesthetics
Manovich establishes what he calls visual aesthetics as the axis of his analysis of Instagram, which allows him to effectively delineate the social network landscape, with Google as the search service, Twitter as the place for news, Facebook as the place for social communication, leaving Instagram the place for the communication of visual aesthetics. This place that concerns the aesthetics of the image was conquered by Instagram by providing users with a panoply of effect filters allowing to stylize images, but also, by the participation of Facebook starting from the year 2012. Here are the two factors of success of Instagram since its creation.
Aesthetics Instagram: casual, professional, planned
Manovich thus proposes three interesting categories when it comes to Aesthetics Instagram: casual photography, professional photography, and designed photography. While professional photography has its roots in the aesthetic styles forged during the 20th century, designed photography evolves in a more contemporary style [10]. Casual photography is the most common on the platform (80% of the images), followed by professional photography (11%) and planned photography (9%).
Instagramism, the avant-garde of Instagram
Manovich’s analysis settles in what he calls Instagramism, which he presents in an analogical relationship with the artistic vanguards (Futurism, Cubism, Surrealism, etc.). Aesthetics Instagram would be the aesthetics codes developed by Instagramism. However, while each of the artistic vanguards of the early 20th century were established at the crossroads of real aesthetic, theoretical, historical and sociological issues, the same cannot be said of the imagery circulating on Instagram. The -isms of the avant-garde currents of the 20th century were artistic trends in the proper sense, whereas the Instagramism proposed by Manovich would be much more difficult to grasp: “Instagrammers are neither the avant-garde creating something entirely new, not subcultures that define themselves in opposition to the mainstream, nor the masses consuming commodified versions of aesthetics developed earlier by some subcultures. » [11]
Manovich tries to mobilize Karl Marx, arguing that the “instagrammers” possess the means (materials?) to produce images, as well as the knowledge to realize them. This seems quite problematic because Instagrammers are, in our opinion, more like a simple user, who chooses among predefined alternatives.
Vilém Flusser’s vision seems more relevant, as he would have situated at the level of the “economic and military complex” [12] the possession of the means of image production (algorithms, software, and above all physical infrastructure). We are not image workers because we own a smartphone and we produce in resonance with the conditioning of a commercial platform, and we do not position ourselves from an aesthetic point of view when we choose one filter rather than another.
Manovich’s contribution
From Manovich’s analysis, we especially highlight the segmentation he makes of the social network landscape (Google/search service, Twitter/Infos, Facebook/social communication, Instagram/visual aesthetics), and also the three image categories he proposes, which allow us to establish the beginning of a typology of the imagery circulating on Instagram (casual, professional and designed photography).
Manovich points out, from an article by Zoe Waldron, the new aesthetic canons on which Instagram is based: The Flat Lay, The First Person and The Minimalist [13]. He is right when he points out that Instagram produced a displacement of advertising photography: whereas pre-instagram advertising photography depicted products from a distance (as if looking out of a store window), photography on Instagram treats products as part of the life of the author of the pictures, and therefore of the viewer. These authors are known as influencers, capable of establishing an aesthetics of images that functions as a personal brand, where product placements slip in.
Art of the Masses: Historical Perspectives for Instagram
Aesthetics Instagram, aesthetics of Polaroid
Associated with Manovich’s research project is Alise Tifentale’s article, From Kodak Brownie to Instagram [14].
Manovich had already proposed an important historical milestone when he evoked Polaroid images in a visual culture that flourished from the 1950s to the 1970s, and which prefigured Instagram: the “snapshot” image, a square image. Tifentale’s article takes into account Kodak’s Brownie camera [15], which appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century, and which would have inaugurated the era of “point and shoot”, in an atmosphere of simplicity immortalized by the famous advertising refrain used by Kodak: “You Press the Button and We Do the Rest” [16]. Indeed, before the Brownie, the practice of photography also implied the practice of developing images in the darkroom, with the associated complexity and costs, considerably reducing the circle of photographers. Kodak’s Brownie was probably the most important generalization of photographic practice.
The selfie before the selfie
Tifentale’s paper then focuses on the selfie, which would not be exclusive to Instagram. The article by French researcher André Gunthert, specialized in photography and visual culture, traces more pertinently the historical roots of the selfie [17]. It is the image of Thelma and Louise at the beginning of their journey that brings the selfie back to its analogue origins, the user manual of Kodak’s Retinette with indications for photographing oneself serving as a support for Gunthert’s assertion: the selfie exists before the digital. And well before the digital, says Gunthert, who already sees in the pictorial practice of the Renaissance portrait an antecedent of those images in which the individual finds himself facing his representation. And in connection with the image of oneself is always the possibility of the self-idealization, either thanks to the talent of the painter, or thanks to Instagram filters.
Mobile photography in the 20’s
If we return to Manovich, towards the end of his study we find a very relevant link between mobile photography and what we know as the New Vision in photography: the first ones to take advantage of the possibility to easily move and carry the camera. For the New Vision, it was a question of exploiting innovative points of view ( at the time), generating images where space was structured according to vertiginous perspectives. This liberation of the point of view, visible in the images of Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy, opened up a world of possibilities that is now within the reach of amateurs with their smartphones.
Aesthetics Instagram, aesthetics of language?
It is again André Gunthert, in his article “L’image conversationnelle” [18], who proposes a rapprochement between the photographic image and language, arguing that the new uses of the photographic image require more than just the aesthetics of images. On Instagram, as on several social networks (Flickr, Facebook, etc.) this image-language connection seems relevant, because images are systematically accompanied by sentences, hash tags, comments and answers. Indeed, the image functions as a very powerful trigger for conversations.
According to Gunthert, this makes obvious the double role of photography: as an artistic medium as well as a “media” understood as a vehicle for information. This link between the photographic image and language offers new historical perspectives: the postcard, the photograph accompanying journalistic texts, are practices that already include the germ of the “conversational images” on social networks such as Instagram. Yet for Gunthert, there is something unexpected in the conversational image: it emerges by overturning history, as the result of the encounter between the digitization of visual content and documented interaction, all subject to exchanges through communication networks. It is not so much a conversation about photos, but with photos [19].
Aesthetics Instagram: on fake spontaneity
Free users, restricted users
The choice of the Instagram team was to allow the uploading of images only from phones, using, at the limit, the photo editing tools offered by the platform. This is undoubtedly in line with the objectivity of photography, its veracity value, which is threatened in the age of fluid digital images. This choice of the system certainly responds to the intention of Instagram’s owners to promote “on the-go” image capture, but establishes a difference between industrial users (who can upload images the way they want), and normal users. It is still a question of what is the truthfulness of the images today, when almost everyone knows and practices photographic editing in a more or less automatic and radical way. Another aspect contributes to the inequality between paid and free users. In fact, the industry that uses Instagram provides professionally produced images, using professional photographic cameras, while the average user will have to comply with the camera on his phone, which will never (even if we admire the performance of the latest iPhones) match that of a professional SLR. To sum up, Instagram presents itself as spontaneous, but this is an illusion, which is built from the very experience of non-paying users, and sets the stage for maximizing the efficiency of images used by professionals for commercial purposes.
Spontaneity and product placement
As Manovich points out, Instagram takes great care to erase the metadata from the images, as without it we are not able to recreate the conditions of the shot. Instagram can then be seen as an attempt to hide the artificiality at the level of the images, by installing a false atmosphere of immediacy, which only affects free users (consumers…). The industry takes advantage of this atmosphere of spontaneity, which makes its images more credible, and therefore more effective when it comes to asserting the rhetorical value of images, which ultimately point towards the consumption of goods and services, or more generally to the generalization of a certain kind of life-style built on consumerism.
Conclusion: Towards an Aesthetics Instagram
Manovich’s study is very interesting because it privileges a statistical approach, made possible by the use of computer resources, which is indispensable when it comes to analyzing a system as complex and diverse as Instagram. While the definition of Instagramism needs to be further specified, Manovich proposes two promising interpretation frameworks. On the one hand, Manovich characterizes social networks for sharing images according to the specificities of their use, which greatly clarifies the landscape of online social uses of photography. On the other hand, and within Instagram, Manovich proposes three extremely interesting categories that allow us to start understanding Instagram: Casual photography, Professional photography and Designed photography. The relevance of Manovich’s description of each of these categories, and especially the portrait he draws of the users concerned for each category, is questionable, but the proposed taxonomy seems very relevant.
This aesthetic categorization gains in readability when one associates a historical perspective. Indeed, the use of photography in Instagram is prefigured by aesthetic trends and practices: Kodak’s Brownie, the culture of the Polaroid, the images of the New Vision. Also, when we see Instagram photography as a special case of the conversational images described by André Gunthert, other historical references emerge: postcards for example. But Gunthert is right to point out that the aesthetics Instagram cannot be examined exclusively in terms of the aesthetics of the image, but requires elements of reflection that we associate with language studies in order to better understand it: photography in social networks is accompanied by texts (hashtags, comments, references) and often becomes the focus of communication exchanges, conversations.
While Gunthert positions himself as a distant and supposedly “neutral” observer, Manovich suggests a form of criticism, although very diluted, that points to the hand of commercial interests on a network that presents itself as a channel for users’ expressiveness.
References
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/20/instagram-1-billion-users/
[2] In 2015, Instagram had 40 trillion images, source https://www.wired.com/2015/09/instagram-now-tops-400-million-users-40-billion-photos/
[3] Lev Manovich is an artist, researcher and educator on new media, known for his essay The Language of New Media published in 2001 by MIT Press.
[4] http://manovich.net/index.php/projects/instagram-and-contemporary-image
[5] L.MANOVICH 2015, p.4.
[6] L.MANOVICH 2015, p.27. Manovich refers to the essay by Jonathan Schroeder http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/snapshot-aesthetics-and-the-strategic-imagination/
[7] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289534367_It_is_Not_Just_a_Picture_Revealing_Some_User_Practices_in_Instagram
[8] L.MANOVICH 2015, p.30. Home mode” refers to images with traditional subjects, such as birthdays and family vacations, images that are addressed to family and friends in a close social circle.
[9] L.MANOVICH 2015, p.39.
[10] L.MANOVICH 2015, Vol.1, p.14.
[11] L.MANOVICH 2015, p.138.
[12] V.FLUSSER 1979.
[13] Master The 4 Types of Product Instagrams, by Zoe Waldron : https://www.business2community.com/instagram/master-the-4-types-of-product-instagrams-01300881
[14] http://www.alisetifentale.net/research-blog-at/2015/12/20/art-of-the-masses-from-kodak-brownie-to-instagram
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownie_%28camera%29
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Press_the_Button,_We_Do_the_Rest
[17] André Gunthert, The consecration of the selfie, Open Edition JOurnals. https://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques/3537
[18] André Gunthert, The conversational image, 2014. https://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques/pdf/3546
[19] André Gunthert, The conversational image, 2014.
Bibliography
Lev MANOVICH, Instagram and Contemporary Image, 2015.
http://manovich.net/index.php/projects/instagram-and-contemporary-image
Vilém FLUSSER, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, 1983.
André GUNTHERT, The conversational image, 2014.
Pierre BOURDIEU, Un art moyen, Essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie, 1966.