A Response to Wim Wenders in Respect of Mobile Photography
Many of you would’ve read the recent news from renowned German film photographer and filmmaker Wim Wenders ‘Phones Have Made Photography More Dead Than Ever’. He goes on “The trouble with iPhone pictures is nobody sees them,” Wenders says. “Even the people who take them don’t look at them anymore, and they certainly don’t make prints.” Obviously we can counter this easily as we have a phenomenal online gallery and print store, where each mobile image is not only created by some of the most renowned mobile artists in the business but in addition each is carefully printed with the upmost care by the most respected printer in the United Kingdom, ThePrintStore, London, whom we have partnered, there’s nothing more ‘serious’ about our business Wenders…
Naturally we’re not the only ones to object to Wim Wenders cries, Dr Michael Pritchard, the Royal Photographic Society’s (RPS) Chief Executive, also wrote this opinion piece in relation to Wenders ‘voice’. He says “Where I do disagree with Wenders is with his assertion that photography is ‘more dead’ than ever and it’s all the fault of the iPhone. The camera has only ever been a tool to take a picture and the smartphone has now put that tool in the hands of everyone. It’s much the same as the Brownie camera did in 1900. What we choose to photograph reflects our own interests, our peer groups, and society generally, in the same way that the Brownie introduced a more informal style of photography and increased the number of photographs being made”.
To read the opinion article complete, please go here.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.Her journalism, criticism and commentary have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography, Android Magazine, NikonPro, DPReview, Which Digital Camera and Which Camera. She has lectured internationally on photography and mobile art, served as a juror for international photography awards, and exhibited her own photographic work across the UK, Europe, South Korea and the United States.Alongside her editorial work, Joanne's photographic and postgraduate research explores death, grief, memory, representation and social inequality through contemporary photography, participatory practice and visual research methods, with the longer-term aim of developing this work through doctoral research.Through TheAppWhisperer, she continues to publish independent photography journalism spanning contemporary photographic practice, mobile imaging, photographic apps, computational photography and emerging imaging technologies.Joanne is available for editorial commissions, photography projects, judging, curatorial work, speaking engagements, consultancy and selected collaborations.
