Instagram: take this down immediately and show it to everyone!

“Instagram is a life written by the man himself. Stars post photos from their corporate events and afterwards, taking pictures of their families and friends. You can write a comment to the picture. There are no intermediaries in communication, and this brings the application to a new level of communication: this approach makes it democratic and accessible to all. Sometimes I want to advise all recruitment agencies: before hiring a person, study what he posted on his Instagram. It’s not a necessary option, of course, but it’s a useful one. An experienced psychologist will immediately understand from a visual file what to expect from a new employee.

Photo: Alexander Zemlyanichenko

Photo: Anna Akelieva

Photo: Alexander Zemlyanichenko

People are living extensively these days: they want to live in a hurry, but they also want to feel in a hurry. He wants to have time to communicate not only in real life – and broadcasts himself through social media, and wants to do so succinctly and visually, and nothing has yet been invented better than photography.

This is why the Instagram app and web service continues to gain momentum. It’s already hard to imagine a person showing the pictures from the holiday upon our return… Emotions of the second freshness do not interest anyone. The air should only be live. “Better late than never!”is not from digital folklore.

Many people wrinkle their noses at the word “Instagram” and take out their huge, full-frame camera heads. Conservatives accuse the app of being vulgar and useless: what is the point of taking daily pictures of your food and your reflection in the mirror??..

However, such opponents do not see the full potential of this “toy for those who do not have a normal camera. The app is liberating: you don’t shoot with a professional camera, so no one is picky about the composition or the subject. Instagram is thus suitable for sketches.

It often happens that you see a good shot but don’t have the camera with you. The app can be a bit of a discipline, because it’s impossible to crop a photo after it’s been taken I’m talking about those who play by the app’s rules . There’s only one format: the square. And on the one hand, it’s just a tribute to Polaroid. On the other hand, Eisenstein’s great square. The master thought that neither horizontal nor vertical formats are ideal. In nature, we see a struggle between these two tendencies: the long crocodile and the tall giraffe. The square is the perfect solution. To see, to compose at once is a rare and very necessary skill.

Cropping is an opinion. The world around us is the same: the same trees, roads and cars. But we “cut” it in different ways. You can shoot a house with an overall view, or you can only take close-ups of details on a brick. The choice is determined by our mood, by our character.

There are times when you return to the place where a photo was taken after a while and realize that you should have taken a close-up photo instead of resorting to generalizations. It’s the same in life – you need to be able to see the specifics. And a thinking person will always be able to draw a parallel between photography and being. Many laws are the same.

Besides, a person is free in his choice of subjects: he can take pictures of his dog and children without any remorse, which he would hardly be able to do with a professional camera, because it would be unseemly. Thus, Instagram allows you to communicate in different registers: you can also post works with a claim, you can also allow yourself to take off your shoes. Real art and kitsch – now you can see them side by side. And if you look closely, these experiments lead to a renewal of photographic language.

A lot of press photographers shoot the event on a professional camera and then take pictures for Instagram. An app is a place for a journalist to express his subjective opinion. As Daisy Buchanan points out in her article for The Gurdian, the appeal of Instagram is a lot about having filters, but the life we see through the app is often “unfiltered.”. In this way, you can observe an event through the eyes of different people – it helps to see it from all sides and draw your own conclusions.

“Instagram is a life written by the man himself. Celebrities post photos of themselves from parties and parties afterwards, taking pictures of their families and friends. You can write a commentary on the picture. There are no intermediaries in communication, and this takes the application to a new level of communication: this approach makes it democratic and accessible to all.

Some magazines today want to be closer to their audience: they create accounts and show backstages from shootings, life inside the editorial office. The shots are unprofessional, but direct in their unplannedness. You don’t see that in a paper edition. Elizaveta Belikova, the former photo editor of the cult Rolling Stones, decided that it would be interesting for readers to observe the magazine’s inner life, and registered an account in Instagram devoted to the magazine’s daily life making of .

“The goal was not to gather subscribers and raise sales. I just thought it might be a nice addition. Plus, I get creative through the app,” Lisa shares. A person may not know the language in which the magazine is published, but is quite capable of perceiving visual content that is universally accessible, blurring the boundaries between people from different parts of the world.

“Nothing like simplicity can bring people together,” said Leo Tolstoy. n. Tolstoy. All you have to do is to choose a subject, press a button, then, if you want, choose a filter brightness blur frame, and post it on the Web – and you’re already part of the world’s visual mosaic. You can tag people in the photo and write a comment to the picture. You can also specify your location.

There is a share function – share a picture by putting it on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, Flickr or sending it via e-mail. And the latest trick of Instagram is the ability to add a short video. When you open the application, you have to choose the icon with a video camera. You can stop and start a video by “pausing” and “stacking” episodes with your finger on the screen, just as you’re shooting.

Photo: Georgy Pinkhassov

The features of the app are used by today’s successful photographers. For example, Georgy Pinkhassov: “Now the weapon in my hands is called “iPhone”. Why did I take it: I wanted to prove to myself that I was still in shape, to remove the barrier that separates me from others.

I prefer to be judged not on my regalia but on my photographs. And so I’m trying to simplify all my methods, to get my hands on something that’s accessible to everyone. That doesn’t mean I left and forgot my camera. The way I went from a knight in armor to a soldier in a chain mail is just a way to be more free.

I honestly think that Instagram is the greatest recent invention of mankind.”Alexander Zemlyanichenko, head of AP New York’s photo service, doesn’t think of the app as a toy. “This photoblog is a wonderful means of self-expression,” says the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner.

Do these famous photographers get “likes.”? “Rarely. I forget,” Georgy admits. “Of course I do,” Alexander answers. Daisy Buchanan says in the same article that these days we feel especially vulnerable and sensitive, and that being able to rate photos – by clicking on heart-shaped icons – gives us the illusion of control. “The Man of Lyrics” – there he is, the hero of our time..

Some have noted the following phenomenon: in “Instagram” photos are not perceived individually, but kaleidoscopically. The user views some amount of work, and it adds up to a single picture. Our modern, digital consciousness is based on the principle of pointillism: quickly we compose a general impression from snatched pieces of reality. To think in the 21st century means to perceive a set of details. Our consciousness forms collages of images, joining what in life could never come together.

“Instagram is a channel for individual news. Everyone has an account to tell their friends and the world about themselves. In a big city a person’s personal space is constricted, but here there is room to expand the ego. And it is done unobtrusively: no one makes us subscribe to the account.

Photo: Denis Abramov

Perhaps we are sometimes sensitive only to global things, but pay little attention to the details. “Instagram, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to take a picture of a doorknob, a swirl of furniture, an apple on a plate. And it turns out that the app developers aren’t stealing our “real” time by making us “sit” in the app, but helping us open our eyes to the world around us. On daily life. And it works!

By the way, I’m very curious how the VGIK masters will take it when I bring my Instagram photos to the workshop? What awaits me: analog scolding or digital praise?.. I will tell my readers about this in the next article.