For me, at its simplest and most “technical” definition, iPhoneography is the capturing, editing, and processing of photographic images with Apple iPhone devices (including iPad and iPod Touch) and within the App Ecology developed by and for those devices. It is a photographic practice with a defined technographic medium (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) that imposes its own set of boundaries that we can explore creatively, artistically, and culturally. The question for me then is not “what IS iphoneography.” iPhoneography is a photographic practice. The question becomes what does iPhoneography will as it works, what does it do photographically, what attitudes, dispositions, new aesthetic and perceptual regimes does it presage and foster given its technographic medium, the cultural space in which it emerges, and more.
I believe the delivery technology, the interface, the “medium” as it were, does impart difference to the process — but as usual, there is also a broader distinction to make when we speak not of iphoneography, but of “mobile photography.”
Here’s a longer explanation, starting with a neat quote that I find compelling and tend to use in my New Media and Technology class. It applies quite well to iPhoneography and mobile photography, in fact to technography in general:
“The definition of a medium, particularly photography, is not autonomous or self-governing, but heteronymous, dependent on other media. It derives less from what it is technologically than what it is culturally. Photography is what we do with it. And what we do with it depends on what we do with other image technologies.” (David Campany, 2003, p. 130, emphasis in original)
The iPhone (and the iPad, and iPod Touch as well) is a delivery technology, a vehicle for creation, manipulation, and dissemination of content. Recorded voice, still images, and moving images are media that can get delivered through various such delivery technologies (hence Droid phones can also create, manipulate and deliver such content). Of course, media is also not simply particular content. We can speak of media as including/involving a set of protocols and/or cultural norms and practices that usually develop (are layered) along with information communication technologies (ICTs). New communication technologies do influence, shape, and change not just the way we “take pictures,” but visual culture, perceptual regimes, the way we relate as we mediate our lives through these means. Particular information communication technologies, for example the iPhone) become powerfully technographic means that inflect our everyday life and practices. Hence, my preferred question: what is it that iPhoneography wills as it works? rather than what is iPhoneography?
In a way we are better off asking what is an iPhone and understanding that it is more than just a phone, or a camera, or a video camera, or personal digital assistant. In that way the iPhone is a media technology, a cultural interface, it has shaped the way we relate to visual culture by remediating (blending) photography as media and cultural practice. But in so doing, it also influences/remediates cultural practices beyond just the visual, and beyond technology. The iPhone itself and its App ecology — shape a particular way to engage in photography, to understand the process of processing and editing, of what it means to create art through it, and of leading our daily lives. We do live through our technologies. iPhoneography is part of a larger “mobile photography” practice (with the same shaping effects, but in a broader ecology). Mobile photography — as the capturing, editing, and processing of images with “cell phones” is booming right now as new means through which we can express our creativity.
It is in that larger sense of mobile photography that perhaps a mobile imaging aesthetic is developing out there. What does that mobile imaging aesthetic look like? What are some defining characteristics? Is it too early to tell? What does iPhoneography will as it works within this mobile imaging aesthetic? Do iPhones as delivery technology, as cultural interfaces, add anything in particular different than say… Android-based cell phones? Are these technologies changing the way we understand photography? If Campany is right (see quote above) and photography is what we do with it, iPhoneography is what we do with it as well — in what ways does it differ in any than somebody taking pics with a Blackberry? Does any difference reside in the Apps themselves? In the interface itself? What is the ethos of the device and of Apple and how might that influence how we do with it? How do we see photography after touch screens, mobile phones, specialized apps, easy wireless communication, and the ubiquity of cultural infterfaces in our pockets?
I see a retro and a lomographic aesthetic out there in iPhoneography circles (I haven’t really looked extensively at image collections taken with other mobile phones) — but perhaps I will address that later.
Returning to the original impetus for this write-up: iPhoneography is one of various photographic practices out there with mobile technology that are possibly shaping a mobile imaging aesthetic. The iPhone as medium/delivery technology, and its App ecology (and perhaps the ethos of the device and of Apple’s design aesthetic) inflects its practice, and perhaps gives it a strong/er voice in this larger cultural movement.
Please excuse the draftiness of these thoughts.
Bib:
Campany, David (ed) (2003) Art and Photography. London: Phaidon