Between the By-Road and the Main Road: Seeing Differently with a Phone

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Seeing Differently with a Phone

I love how the camera on the phone I use shapes how I see--gives rise to new meanings of the ordinary. Technologies extend and constrain us and in doing so repeatedly often situate values as given truths.

Thoreau wrote, "The question is not what you look at but what you see." This is a central tenet to making images, as opposed to just taking photographs. I enjoy the tension that happens when the technologies I use to make images are so different from one another. There is vast world of difference that emerges when I shoot with a Nikon, a Leica, or my iPhone. Exploring these differences affords me the opportunity to see differently.

This points to the importance of agency. The decision as to what tools to use are better left in the hands of the maker.

Below is a collection of images made during the last year using an iPhone and most often the Hipstamatic app.