hipstamatic = pre-ripped jeans

I’ve been playing with the popular hisptamatic iphone app for a couple weeks now.

The stylistic mangling of the photos reminds me of the idea behind ripped jeans. The way new pairs of jeans are pre-ripped to add character, imitating the effect that time and experience would have had on them and removing that stale off-the-shelf look. But by imitating character, you remove the stories behind each ripped stitch, and take all the meaning and authenticity out of the jeans.

In the same way, hipstamatic takes a quality image from the iphone camera and degrades it to the quality of a film photograph, adding character and removing any decision making or searching for equipment that would have originally preceded that final result. When taking a photo with the app you get an “interesting” image in seconds.

Having said that, I’ll probably use it for quick shots that I don’t feel like editing and will throw on facebook real quick. Here are few photos that I’ve taken so far with it: