iPhone Diary

iPhone Diary: 27 March 2009

In late March of 2009, I began to explore the capabilities of my new iPhone camera. Like most of my projects, this one did not spring full-blown from my mind. Rather, I tend to start doing something, then figure out what it is and why it is interesting.

What it is, in this case, is a series of photographs called "iPhone Diary." Each image is subtitled with the date it was made. iPhone Diary photographs must be composed at the moment of taking on the screen of the phone-camera. Although I upload them to my computer and sometimes adjust the contrast or color to represent the scene as near to how I saw it as possible, I do not crop the images.

My purpose in not cropping iPhone Diary pictures and in seeking to re-present a scene as I saw it is distinctly NOT to reinforce the popular notion that the camera produces a mechanical, therefore somehow "objective," record of reality. Photographers are in the business of framing the world. They impose the physical frame of their camera's viewfinder/screen on continuous reality. What ends up within the frame and how it is organized in relationship to the frame is one of the photographer's primary communicative tools. Deciding to not crop the iPhone Diary images thus requires discipline. I must be very clear and deliberate at the moment of making the photograph about what I see and how to frame it so that others will be able to see it as well.

Is it interesting, and if so, how? To me it is, but the photographs are fragments from my life--like a diary of images. I have a story to go with each one. At the same time, perhaps the pictures also somehow transcend the particular. Maybe they evoke your stories, too?