Vintage The Guardian Smartphone Article, by Me
As many of our regular readers know, I have been a camera/photography technology journalist for many years. From my earliest days starting out at Which Camera? magazine through to now with my dream website, theappwhisperer.com.
I thought some of you might like to read one of my very first articles for The Guardian, from 2005, when ‘cameraphones’ were becoming very popular. This is four years before the advent of the iPhone and apps were not even thought of. Did any of you have these handsets? How times move on, take a look at this….
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photography journalist, editor, curator, and the founder of *TheAppWhisperer.com*, one of the world’s leading platforms dedicated to mobile photography and art. Since its launch in 2009, TheAppWhisperer has become an international hub for artists of all levels to discover, learn, exhibit, and engage with contemporary photographic practice.Built on principles of inclusivity, accessibility, and artistic excellence, Joanne has spent almost two decades championing mobile photography as a serious artistic medium. Through interviews, critical essays, exhibitions, competitions, and education, she has helped shape and document the evolution of mobile art on a global scale.Her work has taken her internationally, lecturing on photography and mobile art at institutions and events including the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea, alongside appearances in the UK and Europe. She has served as a juror for international photography and mobile art awards across Portugal, Canada, the United States, South Korea, Italy, and the UK.Joanne is also the founder of *TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com*, one of the first online galleries dedicated exclusively to collectible mobile art, connecting artists with collectors across Europe, the United States, and Asia.Before founding TheAppWhisperer, Joanne worked extensively in print journalism and photographic publishing, including roles at a paparazzi photo agency and as deputy editor of a leading photography magazine. Her freelance journalism, criticism, and commentary have been published widely in both the UK and the US, with bylines in *The Times*, *The Sunday Times*, *The Guardian*, *Popular Photography*, *NikonPro*, *DPReview*, *Which?*, *Vogue Italia*, *LensCulture*, the *BBC*, and more recently, the *Financial Times*, where her published letters on photography continue to contribute to wider conversations around the medium.Alongside her editorial and curatorial work, Joanne’s own photographic practice has been exhibited internationally across the UK, Europe, South Korea, and the United States. Her work increasingly explores themes of grief, loss, death, memory, and the body.Her current research interests centre on grief, death, and poverty, with forthcoming postgraduate study leading towards doctoral research in these areas.Joanne is currently developing new long-form writing and photographic projects and is available for commissions, editorial projects, speaking engagements, and collaborations.Contact: joannetheappwhisperer@gmail.com)
5 Comments
melia
pioneer!
Joanne Carter
Thank you, it’s interesting when you look back occasionally, it makes you realise just how far you have come.
Egmont van Dyck
I still can recall when the phone’s battery pack was the size of a handbag one carried over the shoulder. Now we have a mini-computer in our back pocket. Maybe the next step we will wear glasses, where the rims are our computer and battery components and lenses our screen.
Kim Martino
Too funny! In a few years, we’ll be looking back om THIS!!
Joanne Carter
I remember them Egmont, I didn’t have one though, my first mobile was a Sony, it was about 5 cm thick and you had to pull the aerial out the top. Obviously it couldn’t take photos, and that’s why this article was such a ‘big deal’ at the time. I had been writing a cameras from analogue and the advent to digital for years in tons of other publications and then all of a sudden you could use mobile phones to take photos. No one took it seriously at all. It was not a question of what make you were using, or platform even it was just the fact that you could not be ‘serious’ about photography.
We still battle with that problem now to a certain extent but for the future? Well I think you’re going to find most cameras being ‘controlled’ by apps, watch this space…;)