The Evolution of the Photographic Posture: Part Four

With the release of the iPhone in June 29th 2007, Steve Jobs and his company Apple Inc. put photography into hands of millions of people around the globe.

Accompanied by thousands of apps designated only for photography, cameras of those mobile phones soon became and currently still are one of the most popular and actively used ones in the world. From Wallstreet to the Amazon Forest, from Djibouti to Tokyo to the Crow Nation in Montana — people love to take pictures with their mobile devices in their pockets.

Cause mobile phones connect to the internet easily, sharing photographs has become a piece of cake. Social media platforms like Instagram, Flickr, Twitter, Pinterest or 500px strive because of photographic content users are uploading every single moment to their cloud based services. After uploading a community eagerly engages with photographic work by sharing, commenting, rating and liking. But with all that sharing going on on different platforms, one new question emerges: ”How to be seen or not?”, in the super fast changing activity stream moment after moment …

One arm stretched out while pushing with our thumb digital release buttons on glassy touch screens — each of us recognize this photographic posture as ours more or less. Cats, babies, food, friends, concerts and so forth, have become the main focus of global photographic interests. You might wonder, but there is an audience for any subject imaginable. Just try to find one which is not photographed yet (if you are able to to so), and start posting about it consistently. I bet the community will be yours — like there is one for railway track switches, no kidding.

The application of those cameras are vast. Many creatives use their mobile phone cameras as a quick and easy visual diary and/or as an idea catching tool. Others, with beyond improving mobile phone camera technology, have produced whole cinematic movies, like the US comedy-drama Tangerine shown at Sundance Film Festival in 2015, or the Korean horror movie Paranmanjang (Night Fishing), winner of the Golden Bear at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival by Oldboy director Park Chan-wook in 2011.

Paired with artistic value and meaning some mobile photographs even made it into the field of fine art and publishing — like the contemporary photographic work from American artist Richard Misrach did. His series iPhone Studies is currently presented by several galleries around the US, and was shot on an iPhone.

„The best camera is the one that’s with you.“ to quote American photographer Chase Jarvis, who created the world first mobile photography picture book. And again for that project all photographs were taken on an iPhone without exception.

In his show Chase Jarvis Live he conducts interviews with other professional creatives like photographers, entrepreneurs and authors. The global audience is invited to tweet, mail, and send questions through Facebook, Twitter and Co. or be physically in the studio to ask questions concerning creativity and success in the creative world. Chase Jarvis is a wonderful example of how creatives can invent themselves in different new ways by using new and old camera technology in their favor.