iPhone Photography is a totally valid art form

Yeah yeah, I know what you think – it’s pretentious, it’s lazy, anyone can do it. And maybe that’s true, but I love taking photos with my iPhone, and I’m in good company.

American photographer Damon Winter recently caused a stir when his photo series, “A Grunt’s Life,” was awarded third place at Pictures of the Year International. Not because the world is suffering from war-fatigue, or because the photos were violent or gruesome, but because he’d taken them with his Hipstamatic iPhone application. Winter’s beautiful, intimate photos have sparked a debate regarding whether or not he can call his work photojournalism, given the in-camera processing that occurs on each image.

The critics and photography purists pounced. Photographer Chip Litherland certainly didn’t mince words when he wrote, “what we knew as photojournalism at its purest form is over and POYi just killed it.  Well, they didn’t kill it so much as just dig another knife deeper into the back of its decaying corpse.”

“I suspect the unease over its authenticity as an article of photojournalism comes precisely from the ease and deliberateness with which the effect is applied,” notes Gizmodo writer Matt Buchanan. “The more convenient something is, the more fake it feels. Manipulating the mood of a photo in a dark room, toying with the way it looks to provoke a particular emotional response using chemicals probably wouldn’t provoke this kind of response. Nor would simply using an older camera that happened to produce that kind of image. It’s analogue, so by definition it’s authentic, the logic goes.”

A man enjoying pho for breakfast at the morning markets, Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Image: Neda Vanovac | 2011.

Winter’s full statement regarding the aesthetics and credibility of the iPhone as a professional tool is well worth the read, as he has some compelling points to make.

“I think any discussion on the validity of these images comes down to two basic fundamentals: aesthetics and content,” Winter writes. “At the heart of all of these photos is a moment, or a detail, or an expression that tells the story of these soldiers’ day-to-day lives while on a combat mission. Nothing can change that. No content has been added, taken away, obscured, or altered. These are remarkably straightforward and simple images.

“What I think has gotten people so worked up falls under the heading of aesthetics. Some consider the use of the phone camera as a gimmick or aestheticizing … news photos. I think that those are fair arguments to make, but [they] have nothing to do with the content of the photos. We are being naïve if we think aesthetics do not play an important role in the way we as photojournalists tell a story. … We observe, we chose moments, we frame little slices of our world with our viewfinders, we even decide how much or how little light will illuminate our subjects, and yes we choose what equipment to use and through all of these decisions, we shape the way a story is told.”

Village dogs tussling, Thailand. Image: Neda Vanovac | 2010.

I recently returned from two months in South East Asia, and took three cameras with me – a digital SLR, a Diana+ lomo camera, and my iPhone. Little surprise that I used the pocket-sized iPhone camera the most. For me, it was the perfect mix of digital and analogue aesthetics. Like Winter, I adore square format and would shoot everything in it if I could. Film and processing for my Diana+ is costly and time-consuming, whereas I get the same aesthetic with my iPhone as well as satisfying my desire for the instantaneous gratification that is nowadays so par for the course.

Camera phones have not been the death of the art of photography. On the contrary, they have revived what has in the past tended to be a borderline-elitist activity, and put it in the hands of anyone with an phone. This revolution has been a long time coming, as the ever-dropping prices of point-and-shoots indicate. Photography can belong to everyone. It helps us look at and document our worlds in another way, and share those results. It has been refreshed, and is more spontaneous now than ever before. I wouldn’t dream of denigrating traditional photography, which is a true skill and craft and something that I greatly admire. iPhone photography will never replace it. It just adds another dimension to the field.

Furthermore, iPhone photography takes away the barrier between photographer and subject. It’s easier to be unobtrusive and to snap a quick moment unnoticed that a bulky SLR might not allow in the same way. People relax when they aren’t the subjects of a big lens zooming in on them. Winter said that the troops were more comfortable around his iPhone because it’s a casual tool more familiar to them. Photographer David Guttenfelder, who has also produced iPhone war shots (using the ShakeIt app) has said something similar:

A flower seller in Hanoi. Image: Neda Vanovac | 2011.

“I’ve noticed that Marines and soldiers are now shooting more photos and video themselves. They email them home or post them on their Facebook pages. I’ve even seen them set up a little point-and-shoot video camera next to themselves in the middle of a firefight. But usually they photograph the little moments during their down time to show how they live. The photos are little bits of memory, keepsakes from their long deployments, and a way of communicating with people back home. So, in a way, I was trying to create those kinds of real-life, non-newsy snapshots that Marines might shoot for themselves.”

It’s important to note that just because more people are dabbling in photography this way doesn’t mean that they’re producing masterpieces. You still need to have a good eye to produce a good photograph. As Winter writes, “People may have the impression that it is easy to make interesting images with a camera app like this, but that is not the case — just as it is not the case that good pictures automatically come out of exotic places. At the heart of every solid image are the same fundamentals: composition, information, moment, emotion, connection. If people think this is a magic tool that makes every image great, they are wrong. Of the hundreds and hundreds of images taken with the phone over the course of those six days in Nahr-i-Sufi, only a handful were worth reproducing.”

The Hipstamatic is a digital way to recreate the one-off charm and surprise of analogue photographythat more and more, people have found themselves missing. They want photos that feel like a unique frozen moment, a happy accident. The proliferation of fauxlaroids on the internet has been cause for complaint from more than one quarter. But really, what’s the harm in indulging in a little new-age fun with a vintage feel?

Check out Damon Winter’s photos and their original accompanying story for the New York Times. Other professional photographers who have begun working with their iPhones and are well worth having a look at include Matt Nager, Todd Heisler and Kainaz Amaria. Greg Schmigel of Just What I See has also been producing arresting, lovely street images via his iPhone.

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