In Favor of Cell Phone Photography

Towards the end of John Spellos’ 2006 documentary, The Photographers Series: Keith Carter, Carter reflects on a statement made by his favorite playwright: “You have to know the history of your medium and you have to make art in your own generational way.” While admittedly this assertion rubbed me the wrong way at first (for I love film photography—certainly not the medium of my generation), the more I reflected on it the more I came to feel that this statement legitimized my passion for cell phone photography. As a photographer I know I should always have a camera on me so that I am ready for action whenever a moment of inspiration strikes; what better way to do this than with my cell phone, which I am never without? It is much easier to carry a small cell phone around than a large camera with a bag for film or memory cards or lenses. At first this thought made me feel lazy, like I was being a cop-out for choosing a medium for its convenience—but does convenience negate a medium’s fine artistic quality? Polaroid cameras, for example, may be thought of as less artistic because they “developed and delivered a picture so instantly that it virtually stripped the hand of the artist down to one action. Click.” [1]Many famous photographers, however, used this medium to create fantastic works of art, from André Kertész to Walker Evans to Robert Mapplethorpe. The convenience and immediacy of the Polaroid did not negate their artistic choices in composition.

 

 One could argue that a cell phone is different because it is not made solely as a camera, but as a multipurpose tool that just happens to have a camera in it. In other words: cell phones are not made for photography. I find this fact to be one of the greatest advantages of using the camera on my cell phone, however. People change when they are in front of a camera, whether they intend to or not. Even if you are told not to pose, to just go about your business as usual, it is hard not to acknowledge on some level that you are being watched and recorded. It is therefore difficult to get truly candid shots of people. This is where the cell phone comes in handy: people hardly notice it, for everyone has one, and there are so many different uses that, even if one does notice it, they rarely assume they are having their picture taken. Many times friends have assumed I am texting or playing games on my phone when really I am recording the candid moments I treasure. In my experience, the cell phone has allowed me a level of invisibility that is much harder to achieve with solely a camera, and I believe this shows in the images my phone creates. Below are a few examples.