"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." - Dorothea Lange

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

iphone photography

Several folks have told me they thought it was pretty funny that of all the cameras I have in my arsenal, I chose to use my iPhone for the Estate Sale portraits.

I think a lot about the onslaught of iPhone images - about all the Hipstamatic and Instagram pictures that are streaming in front of our eyes these days. I wonder whether or not the ones I make could be considered "fine art" or "photojournalism" by editors, publishers, gallerists and/or museum directors (I'll find out when I show the new work to reviewers in Santa Fe later this month!)

This morning I ran across an article by Kathy Ryan (from October, 2011) about iPhone pictures. (Ryan is the director of photography for the NYT Magazine.) I love what she has to say about the choice that was made by the mag to run iPhone shots from Afghanistan by photojournalist Ben Lowy. Here's an excerpt :

"Some might argue with our choice-as in, 'hey, isn’t snapping away with a camera phone cheating?'-, but we’re believers in trying out new ways of image-making, in the hope that we might come up with original and evocative pictures. The history of photography is the history of new technologies and tools. The fact that Hipstamatic is a phone app doesn’t detract from its photojournalistic potential — in fact, that may even make it more valuable in that regard. As Lowy says: 'iPhones enable a greater intimacy with a subject in a way that traditional cameras can’t. People are so used to seeing you pull out a huge camera and then acting a certain way. iPhones are still new enough that you get more realistic, less subjective, images contentwise because you aren’t pulling out this huge camera.'"

2 comments:

Stacie Pottinger said...

I agree with the NYT writer. I think using the iPhone was a great choice for this particular series. The camera is the iPhone is better than my first digital camera was.

Buy Electronic Products Online said...

What is the iPhone photography app that allows you to have a single person multiple times in one photo?