The Misanthropy of the Progressive

I have despised the progressive for a long, long time now. Every time I hear someone refer to themselves as such –  assuming it to be a good thing –  my spine tingles as an icy hand traverses the vertebrae one at a time, tickling it with each frosty digit. Progressives are hideously obnoxious –  snobs and elitists who think that they know what is best for the rest of us.

Sometimes, without intending to, they let the veneer of civilisation slip and reveal the monster that lurks below. Such as Jonathan Jones when talking about Instagram. On the face of it, it’s the usual type of photo snobbery you get among those that think they are better than the average Joe. And, frankly, among the turgid, nonsensical dross one comes across in the cesspit that is CiF, this one shines like a new dollar, so outstanding an example of rampant snobbery and stupidity is it, you can probably see it sparkling like a beacon from the space station.

It is increasingly hard to understand not just why anyone would feel possessive of a picture they choose to put online, but why anyone can be bothered taking photographs at all in a culture that has changed lay photography from a private, often emotive pleasure and ritual shared with friends and family to a twitchy mass addiction shared with … everyone in the world.

Here then is the first hint. Photography is okay providing this great unwashed aren’t all doing it. When it becomes popular and people take snaps (ugh! Snaps! The outrage!), then the serious types have no choice but to eschew the pastime. Well, only if you are a screaming snob, that is. I switched from film to digital and still use a DSLR for my serious stuff and use the phone camera as I would a compact for those quick snaps that I might otherwise miss. An addiction, though would be to overstate it somewhat.

Digital photography is a degradation of private life, as Instagram’s world of micro trivia shows.

This, then, is an example of the sheer idiocy in the piece. Digital photography is nothing of the sort. It is simply another medium and is no more a degradation of the private life than is film –  or the artist’s watercolour. That people choose to upload their images to a site such as Instagram is another matter entirely.

I speak as a recovered digital photography addict. I more or less stopped taking photographs at all once I realised I was subscribing to a cheap self-deception about the originality, beauty and meaning of my tens of thousands of pictures. An enthusiam has frozen into revulsion. I love the convenience of digital cameras and their potential to create beauty – but I hate it, too.

Pseud’s corner here we come. There’s not much else to say about such delusional wibble.

When did my photophobia begin? When I realised that I was buying into the same delusion of grandeur as everyone else.

No, no, no… You have delusions of grandeur –  no one else has, just you and you alone. Don’t project your inadequacies onto the rest of us.

So I think the moment it all went wrong was on a visit to Kew Gardens. There I was, having fun snapping water lilies, when I realised that about a hundred people were doing the same thing. Grannies, kids, babies, all with cameras and a sense of being artists. I am waiting for dogs and cats to get their own photo-sharing site for their genuinely beautiful snaps.

And there you have it, in one paragraph; why I hate the progressive. These supposed champions of the working class sooner or later display their sneering disdain for the lumpen masses. And, being a good progressive, Jonathan Jones cannot possibly be taking part in an activity that is now the domain of the working classes –  the kids, the grannies and all. That would be too bad.

Of course, I could have it all wrong. Mr Jones may just have seen the work of these people and realised that his own output didn’t stack up. But I doubt it somehow.