Instagram as Art: New York City's First Exhibit

(taken from W Hotel Facebook Page)

Last week, The W Hotel in Timesquare launched New York City’s first ever Instagram Exhibition.  The photos, taken with cellphones, edited with the Instagram and printed on canvas will hang in the Hotel’s Living Room Lounge through June. And while the Hotel manager seems excited about the display, (“we hit a homerun with this one,” he told the Wall Street Journal), not everyone is ready to celebrate this new form of photography.

(taken from W Hotel Facebook Page)

Instagram, a free application for the iPhone and Android, allows users to take photographs and choose from a variety of filters and boarders to alter the aesthetic. Users can then share their photographs on the Instagram website, and post it to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.  It was created in October 2010 by two Stanford graduates in their twenties, and ever since its inception, it has proven to be a contentious subject amongst photographers.

(Christina Paik)

“Instagram goes against everything I believe in as a photographer” says Christina Paik, a 21-year-old photography student at Parsons Paris.  Paik is a firm advocate of film photography over digital. She believes the restricted number of frames and the inability to see a photo until it’s finished, forces the photographer to focus more on the creative process. 

“I think the filters are cheesy,” she says.  “Why would I try to make it look like its something it's not?  Everybody just takes photos and uses these dumb filters and they are stoked because they think it looks so sick, but it’s not genuine.”

Matt Kelly, a 20-year-old photography student at SVA agrees that the Instagram filters create a lack of authenticity. 

“People don’t notice that when they apply filters or add these boarders, they suggest the photo is a type of film,” he says.  “Their almost ignoring the history of photography, medium format film, and other things that as a photographer I’ve taken time to learn and respect.”

(Matt Kelly)

Despite this criticism, Instagram has enjoyed a wealth of success since.  In April, Facebook bought the comapny for $1 billion.  According to an article by Chris Taylor for abcnews.com, the number of people using the app surpassed 50 million at the start of May.

Its masses of users has made it a staple in social networking.  In fact, photographs for the W Hotel exhibition were chosen from twitter users who shared their pictures with the hash tag #wdesign. Staying true to Instagram’s online origins, photographers twitter names are listed next to their work at the exhibition, not their real names.

While the idea of an Instagram exhibition appalls Christina Paik, she admits that application isn’t entirely a bad thing.  She herself began using it a few months ago, but never alters her photographs with Instagram filters.

“Instagram’s opened up other peoples eyes to the art of photography and the magic of it,” Paik says.  But she maintains that Instagram photographs don’t compare to film photography.

“Maybe this isn't how other people see it” she says. “Maybe people on Instagram think they are good photographers because they have over 300 likes.”

(instagram photo at the W Hotel exhibition by @cxcart)