From My Bookshelves: 10 Photography Books That Continue to Influence My Practice
Looking back through almost two decades of writing for TheAppWhisperer, reviewing photobooks, interviewing photographers and studying photography myself, I recently realised I had reached a rather practical problem: I had run out of room for my photobook collection. The solution was the installation of yet another set of bookcases, a reminder not only of how many photography books I have accumulated over the years, but also of how frequently I return to them. As I was unpacking and reorganising the shelves, I found myself revisiting old favourites and rediscovering books that had influenced my thinking at different stages of my photographic journey. The titles included here represent only a small…
Michelle Sank on AI, Photography, Truth and Authenticity
Michelle Sank on AI, Photography and the Future of Seeing Michelle Sank was one of the first photographers I thought of when I started putting this series together. Born in South Africa and later settling in Britain, her work has often explored questions of identity, belonging and displacement, examining how people navigate social, cultural and personal change. Over the years, Sank has photographed communities, families and individuals with a quiet sensitivity that allows stories to emerge rather than be imposed upon the viewer. Her projects have taken her from South Africa to the UK and beyond, often focusing on those whose lives lie at the edges of broader political and…
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How Professional Photographers Build Online Portfolios in 2026
One of the questions I’m asked most often by photographers is whether they still need a portfolio website. After all, many of us spend a significant amount of time sharing work on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms. It’s where conversations happen, where communities form and where new work is often first seen. My answer is always the same: yes. Social media is useful, but it isn’t a portfolio. It never has been. Over the years, through TheAppWhisperer, I’ve looked at thousands of photographers’ websites. I’ve interviewed photographers and mobile artists from around the world, reviewed portfolios, judged competitions and followed the development of artists at every stage of…
Between Photography and AI: A Conversation with Dan Marcolina
Dan Marcolina is a photographer, designer, author and visual storyteller whose work spans more than four decades of technological change in image-making. Beginning with traditional lens-based photography, his creative journey has evolved through digital imaging, Photoshop, mobile photography, augmented reality and, more recently, generative AI. An early advocate of digital creativity, Marcolina co-founded with his wife Denise, one of Philadelphia’s first all-digital design studios and has spent much of his career exploring how emerging technologies can expand visual expression while remaining grounded in photographic observation. He is the author of several books on mobile photography, including iPhone Obsessed, one of the first iPhoneography books published, and has lectured internationally on…
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Remembering Kerry Mitchell
I was deeply saddened today to hear of the sudden death of mobile photographer and artist Kerry Mitchell. I interviewed Kerry for TheAppWhisperer several times and, like many people within the mobile photography community, I always remembered the quiet sensitivity of her work. Her images never shouted for attention. They didn’t need to. They carried emotion in a much softer and more lasting way. At a time when so much photography competes to be louder, faster and more immediate, Kerry’s work did the opposite. It slowed you down. There was a calmness to her images, but also something underlying them that felt fragile and deeply human. I think that’s why…
“The Integrity of the Fine Artist Must Be Preserved” — Rita Colantonio on AI and Photography
Over the past few years, much of my writing and photographic research has increasingly centred on questions of memory, grief, spectatorship, and photographic truth. I have become deeply interested in how photographs shape emotional understanding, how images linger in the mind, influence perception, and quietly alter how we remember experiences long after the moment itself has passed. Photography has never simply been about documentation; it is tied to absence, intimacy, trauma and belief. We do not merely look at photographs; we inhabit them emotionally. At the same time, through my work at TheAppWhisperer, I have spent almost two decades observing and documenting the evolution of mobile photography and digital art from…
