As I wrote on my other site: I see the iPhone as an neat technographic tool that facilitates our spontaneous, playful, and experimental creative imagination to emerge. Not that such an imagination does not find other expression, but mobile technology has opened up intriguing new ways to envision ourselves as creative subjects, and as a result, how we see the world through the screens that we carry. On a more academic note, I am intrigued by how the iPhone, as cultural interface, brings with it, challenges, or facilitates particular perceptual regimes. Both of those explanations amount to one thing: it is fun.

But what about the dSLR? That’s a more complicated answer: I love my dSLR but frankly I use it now when I am far less exploratory and playful with photography. In other words I tend to shoot with it primarily when I have what I consider serious shoots. Carrying it, and carrying gear with me is more cumbersome. I no longer like to carry a big bag full of gear, and so most days I end up shooting with my iPhone as a way to play, share with a fun online community, and check out locales for further shooting.

What would I love to carry with me right now (For example, I am headed on a longish scooter ride today, and the under the seat storage is too small for my dSLR gear)? I would love a camera the size of a Fuji X100, but with a full frame sensor. : ) Well, we’re talking a Leica M9, or M8, and I’ll be darned if I will pay that much, but frankly, a rangefinder style camera, with a couple of simple lenses (small), and great quality (I would be happy with an APS-C sensor). Barring that, a micro 4/3 would do the trick. I like the looks of Panasonic’s DMC-GF-1, but like the features and versatility of the Olympus version (the latest one seems a bit silly though). I’ll just have to wait, and in the meantime, more fun with the iPhone.

I thought about taking my Leica III-C (1949) on my trip today, but frankly, I need film and don’t have the time for the kind of shooting that would require.

What’s more, even though I started taking photographs when I was 15 or 16, I certainly would not have expected that my images would one day be captured, processed and disseminated with a device that doubles, among many other things, as calendar, task manager, game platform, video playback instrument, audio recorder, compass, ebook and news reader, musical instrument, and of course, camera.

And yet, here I am doing just that, courtesy of Colleen Duffley and Jill Gaupin, creators, organizers, and co-curators of the Light Impressions: A Celebration of iPhone Photography exhibit (part of a larger event called Rock, Paper, Digital, celebrating studio b’s third anniversary, And let me tell you, what a remarkable exhibit it has been so far, and what an impressive operation by all at studio b! (Note: check out their Facebook page here — and check out Jill’s recent post about the exhibition here)

You see, where it is perhaps too easy to declare that those folks running around taking pictures with iPhones are ultimately doing nothing special — that in fact they are just taking pictures with yet another compact point and shoot camera — studio b has taken iPhoneography as artistic expression seriously. What studio b curators have recognized is that like all art, great iPhoneography as artistic expression transcends the medium, transforms it and itself and thus raises questions about art, about the cultural spaces in which it emerges, and about the future of the photographic image and our encounter with it. Moreover, studio b has truly worked to connect all artists into a closely bound collective, eschewing the “artist-as-presenter-of-individual-work approach” for a presentation that highlights both the uniqueness of the artists, and the nature of iPhoneography as a networked, mobile, tightly connected movement.

Their recognition that there is something different and unique about iPhoneography’s ethos as artistic endeavor, one shaped by the iPhone/iPad and their app ecology, has led them to take an innovative approach to the display of the artists’ work, one that is itself an artistic installation.

iPad Artist Display Grid

The installation, 40 iPad 2′s aligned in a grid that constitutes a massive 40-screen-wide slideshow, becomes its own work of modern technological art — connected, fluid and dynamic in the way that it constantly changes, beaming itself up in intervals, occupying both physical and virtual locations. The installation has become a massive interface that mediates not just the artists’ work but, as Lev Manovich reminds us, culture itself.

In addition, the installation instantiates its own surveillance of itself and those that view it in situ through another iPad secured to the facing wall which transmits a video feed to the internet. The exhibit then, besides the presentation of artwork, stares at itself as detached observer at the same time that it serves as lens for others to view both the artwork and the exhibit  through digital means. The space between these two walls then has become a virtual space, one that gets beamed up as variable artistic composition of its own. Talk about digital recursion! I fully expect this exhibit to be prepared for travel.

iPad Installation

If Apple has not yet noticed, they should, and they should highlight the exhibit in one of their great iPad ads. Because this exhibit exemplifies something that Apple wants consumers and the market to recognize, and which Colleen, Jill, and the rest of the studio b staff have pulled off quite nicely: that the iPhone and iPad’s are more than phones or tablets, they are platforms for human ingenuity and creative expression, they are cultural interfaces. iPhoneographers are leading the charge in demonstrating just that.

And such has been also the gift of this exhibit and all those at studio b that have made it come true: making us all feel a part of something larger, something emergent, exciting, innovative, and full of the excitement of artistic expression. It has nourished that feeling with enthusiastic vigor in what is a remarkable effort so far. I expect more great things in the making, and remain thrilled to be a part of it, and to be in such great company.

P.S.  A link to the images I submitted for the exhibit.

Nathaniel I. Cordova (Nacho) is an avid photographer with a primary interest in visual storytelling, in particular photojournalism, documentary, and street photography. His iPhoneography work however is generally motivated by a desire to explore the interconnected nature of life given the utter contingency of everyday moments. Such interests are often informed by a Zen humanist perspective rather than by intricate philosophies of art. He blogs at Foto-Rhetoric.org where he often considers how new visual imaging technologies shape our understanding of the world around us. Nacho is also a Professor of Rhetoric and Media Studies at Willamette University, a private liberal arts university located in Salem, Oregon, where he teaches courses in contemporary rhetorical theory, public moral argument, race, ethnicity, and the public sphere, and new media and technology.

I imagine that statement as a blurb in a card next to work displayed, hence its lack of details. It doesn’t provide any personal info besides basics. Nevertheless, I’ve highlighted what is perhaps the most important statement of the bio — a general impetus or motivation. I emphasize its general nature because some of the work is more readily informed by that ethos, and because I see that as a fairly large domain to explore. I want that ethos to emerge rather than to be a “methodological straightjacket.”

Recently, a friend and fellow iPhoneographer asked me how I would describe and perhaps categorize my work. I can describe it, but it is probably best to say that it defies MY easy categorization. I am exploring after all, and congruent with the medium I am giving myself free rein to roam, figure it out, burst out of photographic boundaries in which my dSLR work had emplaced me. But it is also fair to say that when I am most self-conscious about my more artistic efforts (iPhoneographic or not) I recognize that much of my creative mindset leans toward dispensing with any particular way it has to be or look. I don’t set out to make images that are easily recognizable representations of anything, nor am I trying to self-consciously steer away from that by cloaking images in some fog that the viewer has to decipher before they are rewarded with the gift of enlightenment. Not all my photo work falls within that frame — my PJ/social documentary work about immigration for instance is quite self-consciously a project.

Funnily images don’t really reveal themselves completely at once upon first viewing, or maybe even ever. We can’t get into the mind of the artists, and we bring way too much baggage with us. So, the best I can say is that my mind (creative bits and all) is argumentative, it wants to resist, it is always asking otherwise, and asking others to think otherwise. To William Morris’s statement “You can’t have art without resistance in the materials,” I would say that such an argumentative and thinking-otherwise mind is the resistance I encounter, the traction, the friction, the pushback to any of my creative expression. That, I do believe, is reflected in my images.

This time around I’m prepping a short workshop on “building photographic narratives.” I’ve been covering this subject for the last few years in a few of my classes (primarily to help students get up to speed in producing their own short digital storytelling projects). The workshop treats sequencing, juxtaposition, narrative arc, the pentad (agent, act, agency, scene, purpose), and GEEL (Gesture, Expression, Environment, Lighting), among a few other subjects. It might very well be that I offer the same workshop as in 2009, or that this one on photographic narratives is the one. We’ll see. I’m glad to be connecting once again with Prensa Comunitaria.

Global Voices has a nice write-up of Prensa Comunitaria here. They describe the organization and its efforts nicely:

Prensa Comunitaria [es] (Community Press) was founded in 2004 with the objective to empower the Puerto Rican communities through the creation of media. In its beginnings, it created a net of community newspapers, and then developed alternative radio and television shows and, more recently, produced a series of shorts for a community movie forum. Prensa Comunitaria is one of the most important projects of citizen journalism in a country where traditional media establish the daily news agenda and direct public opinion.

I’ll post some pics when I get back!

It is funny, but just as when I serve on an academic search committee, the experience of being selected is a humbling one. Serving on an academic search committee guarantees that one will come in contact with an incredible amount of wonderful scholars, creative, prolific, dynamic, most of which are doing wonderfully exciting work. Reading through their materials always makes it easy to reflect deeply on one’s own work and accomplishments. Being invited to this fabulous exhibition has the same effect. Looking at the work of the other invited artists there is nothing but to say “Wow!, how was I selected!?” It is less a crisis of confidence (after all, we do believe in our work), and more a recognition of just how truly outstanding those other folks are, and a re-adjusting of our sense of fitting into this creative community. I’m honored to be in the company of such accomplished folks.

Now I have to prepare a set of images to exhibit, a bio, and a few other things. Excuse me if I don’t tell which images I will submit to the curators but I think it is best if these remain under wraps for now.

The Light Impressions exhibition is part of studio b’s 3rd Anniversary event titled Rock, Paper, Digital which kicks off on June 10.

Studio b, “a playground for the imagination”, is a creative venue that merges visionary minds from myriad disciplines including photography, art, design, literature, food and wine. Learn more about the studio b venue here: http://www.studiobthebeach.com/.

Rock, Paper, Digital is a month-long celebration of the expression of art through the ages, from where we’ve been to where we are going. The works of well known and up and coming artisans and artists from around the globe will be showcased, from encaustic paintings, figure drawing and recycled art to paper couture, digital photography, video art and more. More information will be available online soon with a list of all the great artists who will participate in this special celebration.

SUBMISSION: Please submit a link to an online portfolio of your iPhone Photography to scoop@studiobthebeach.com by May 25, 2011. All submissions will be reviewed by studio b’s Colleen Duffley and exhibition co-curator Jill Gaupin.

10 iPhone photographers from this Call for Entries will be chosen to participate in the exhibition and contacted by email no later than May 30. Chosen iPhone photographers will be asked to submit 15 iPhone photos, 13 of which will be included in the month-long exhibition.

Please note: all iPhone photographs submitted must have been taken and edited/processed on an Apple iPhone, 3G, 3GS, or 4. Images manipulated and/or processed on a computer will not be considered. Specific details will be forwarded to exhibition participants by May 30.

The exhibition will be presented digitally and/or in print. Chosen participants will be given specific information as it becomes available.

There is no fee for entry or participation.

All participants will retain copyright of their images. If you are chosen to participate in the exhibition, studio b reserves the right to display images with full credit to the photographer on studio b’s website and in the gallery. Please note that the media in attendance reserves the right to document the event for related coverage.

All questions and inquiries should be sent to scoop@studiobthebeach.com.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS: Light Impressions: A Celebration of iPhone Photography was conceived by studio b’s visionary owner and world-renowned professional photographer Colleen Duffley and passionate iPhone photographer Jill Gaupin.

Colleen and Jill, enthusiastic supporters of the emerging movement, share the belief that this new photographic medium allows everyone with a desire to express their creativity on a level playing field, regardless of formal training and experience. Colleen is credited with organizing the first online New Year’s Eve and Day cameraphone exhibition in 2007 and which continues annually today.

Colleen holds a degree in photography and has been a professional photographer for over 25 years. Her high-profile clients include: Neiman Marcus, Volkswagon, Metropolitan Home Magazine, Bon Appetit Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, British Homes and Gardens and many more. Learn more about Colleen at http://www.collenduffleyphotography.com/

Jill is a web publisher and newcomer to iPhone Photography. She has already received several accolades for her work and you can view her online portfolio at http://www.flickr.com/iPhonePhotographyConnect.

These iPhoneographers will also be showing their work at the exhibition (follow links to view their portfolios)

The event showcases projections of cell phone images from competition finalists. A book printed by A&I with the featured photographs will be sold as well and the proceeds will be donated to SnapShop — a photography workshop series for at-risk high school students.

I’ll be ordering a book!

iPhoneography Central is a neat site dedicated to posting tutorials for achieving particular photo effects on the iPhone. Let me clarify: the iPhoneography “movement” is bursting with vigor, creativity, dynamism, and wonderful artists who are prolifically generating fabulous work on the iPhone, but also on iPad and iTouch devices. The work is more often than not, stunning and awe-inspiring. The creativity boundless. There’s a firm disposition on the part of artists to rely solely on the iPhone and its App ecology to capture/create and post-process their work. Thus, the iPhone and its App ecology have become transformative mediums for artistic imagination and expression. Interested yet? Well, it became evident that all those artists are doing some rather cool, neat, and special work that would be nice to either imitate (immitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all!) or learn from in order to nourish our own artistic imagination. And thus iPhoneography Central was born.

iPhoneography Central is the brainchild of Nicki Fitz-Gerald (FlickrFitzy) who put the site together and has wrangled more than 100 artists so far to contribute to the site. The tutorials are clear and helpful, and provide a wealth of information for either the aspiring, beginner, or advanced iPhoneographer.

Interested in submitting a tutorial? Here’s the info from the site:

If you would like to join us and submit a tutorial or article on anything iphoneography related, please contact me using the Contact Us button at the top of this page or send images and text to nicki@iphoneographycentral.com. Alternatively you can sign up as an artist and submit the tutorial yourself; to join as an artist, simply click on the Register button top right of this page.

What else do you need? Head on over!

Full disclosure:  I do have a tutorial included on the site, but no, they did not pay me (they don’t pay for submissions) and no they did not ask for a write-up.

Imagine an iPhoneography trip to the island with all participants using only iPhones? We would look like a tourist brigade. I can just imagine iPhoneographers with tripods, magnetic lenses, photo vests, Apple caps, etc., just waiting for the right light, while others App madly away! What a hoot! Let us do it!