After Instagram … Again

Kenneth Jarecke takes another run at the Instagram galleries posted by Time magazine … if you thought a day’s reflecting would have tempered his opinion, think again.

This one graf struck me:

You can put it in historical, pre-digital terms if you like. If Life Magazine asked Henri Cartier-Bresson to shoot a hurricane with a Brownie, what do you think he’d tell them? Yeah you’re right, and it doesn’t sound any better in French either.

As I have preached, we have spent nearly 200 years improving photography through technological innovations, why the hell do we want to intentionally degrade historic images?

I just don’t get it. For fun, family and friends, filter away. But photojournalism is about Truth Telling, it’s about Accuracy, it’s about Capturing Emotion – it is not about vignetting, color shifting or implying vintage authenticity through software.

Instagram is great fun, but it Absolutely, Positively DOES NOT belong in journalism.

Well, not until the Associated Press and New York Times start writing stories in iambic pentameter.