Genuine Imitation

These are disturbing pictures. Why? Because they reveal to me just how far I have strayed from what once seemed like the One True Path.

I was looking through the image files hanging around on my antique iPad 2, bought second-hand back in 2012, and which I have been using as a convenient "media consumption" device ever since. Back then the screen quality was a revelation, and it's still pretty good by most standards, but the device only has 16Gb of storage, so periodically I look for unused apps and data to delete in order to free up some space. As I was swiping through the images I saw these two, and thought: now those are a lot better than I thought at the time I made them.

As you can probably tell, they are the result of the sort of app-driven instant effect that everyone loves (whatever app it was I can't recall and it is long gone). The Web's image-sumps like Flickr are full of them: imitation Polaroids, fabricated faded snaps, simulated glass-plate negatives... In the first rush of iPad enthusiasm I downloaded some photo-manipulation apps – they're so cheap! – and had a go; I thought it was fun but the results seemed way too easily won, and I moved on.

In the meantime, of course, I have become a bit of a forger myself, and this has affected my judgement. Or rather, it has altered my judgement; I like these now, in an uncomplicated way. I think I am probably sufficiently removed from the ease of their making (talk about "You press the button, we do the rest"!) to see them purely as pictures and, well, they're rather nice, even if they are still "fake" in some sense.

I've a feeling this is confirmation that I'm not really a "photographer" any more. Or at least not the sort of photographic purist who would automatically sneer at a shortcut to an interesting result. What, after all, is a photograph, when compared with a painstakingly hand-made sketch or painting, if not a convenient, instant shortcut to an interesting result?

The great advantage of sticking to the One True Path – the way of authenticity, of quality, of skill – is that it makes moral judgements so much easier. Like, say, a vegan, you can always neatly position yourself on the angels' side of any debate. The trouble is, it also means rejecting most of the technical developments of recent decades, despite the fact that approved "authentic" art practices clearly include techniques like screen-printing, lithography and engraving which, in their day, were themselves innovative technical processes intended to facilitate mass production. Having become obsolete for their original purpose, they nonetheless have pictorial qualities that are attractive to the "artisanal" picture-maker. They are also quite laborious, difficult to learn, and involve the use of expensive, hard-to-obtain kit, which always adds virtue to any artistic endeavour. See the darkroom v. digital debate.

Therein lies one of the dilemmas of our contemporary world, which finds expression in many ways, but which boils down to those eternal questions of authenticity, quality, and skill, and the value we put on them. In what way is a hand-crafted chair that costs £6000 a better chair than a factory-produced item selling for one percent of its price-tag? Is a hit record made by a singer using pitch-correction software and synthesised instruments a work made by the "artist" or by the producer, and is it "real" music? What is the value of a bought degree, or one earned using essays from an essay-bank? If it makes a company's products significantly cheaper, and thus available to the mass market, does it matter that they are made in sweatshops in the Third World, or by robotic manufacturing processes that have put thousands out of work? Most difficult of all, Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?

Essentially, these are questions that have been around since the Industrial Revolution, but intensified by mass production and "mass" democratic societies, and brought to urgency by globalisation and IT. When is the real thing the wrong thing? Is the best the enemy of the good? If everybody has something (e.g. clean water) does that devalue it, or merely create a niche market for a more expensive, bottled version? If only a few super-rich people can afford hand-made goods, does that make them an intrinsically regressive social evil?*

Most of us have no choice in these matters, of course: I mean, six thousand pounds for a single chair? The one I'm sitting on right now is quite real enough, thanks. Which doesn't mean I wouldn't like a classy chair, or to buy my clothes skilfully tailored to fit (if only!); as the saying goes, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Sadly, there will probably never be a William Morris-style utopian socialist future, where every household sits down to a meal prepared from fresh, organic, and locally-sourced ingredients on chairs handcrafted in the workshop of a skilled artisan. Even if, ironically, that was once-upon-a-time the only world anyone knew. Most of the world's population today, I'm sure, would settle for recyclable plastic furniture, clean water, and at least one nourishing meal a day, even if it came pre-packaged and included some kind of meat-substitute. Which doesn't mean they wouldn't like to get their knees under a table at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons.

You might say this comes down to the difference between a fake chair and a fake chair.  You can quite happily spend the evening in your snide Eames lounger, but nobody will ever try to sit on a fake chair without regretting it. So, these pictures may not be quite what they seem, and may have been made with less labour and skill than their appearance might suggest, but they are pictures, without a doubt: you can sit in them, so to speak, with complete confidence. Whether or not you value the experience is another matter, and entirely up to you.

And notice how I've written this whole thing without once using the word "skeuomorph".

But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just backdated, yeah...
I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south **
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those crocodile tears are what you cry
It's a genuine problem, you won't try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by.
The Who, Substitute

* I mean the goods, not the people, though the same goes for both, obviously.
** If anyone can provide a convincing explanation of this baffling line, I'd be very surprised.