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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 7 March 2021
Reminiscing about touch… can you recall when you last touched someone that does not live with you? I can, it was when the brunette and I were in ‘our’ secretive riverside café eating home-made cakes and drinking freshly brewed cappuccinos. Chocolate cake for the chocoholic and carrot cake for myself. The staff are also the owners of this café and a mutual embrace is the norm for their regulars. It leaves an inner glow that lasts long after the visit is over, usually into the following week for me. But like all ‘non essential’ businesses in this pandemic, it has been closed for a year now. This is resulting in…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 10 January 2021
My key word for 2021 is ‘Optimism’. Sounds unlikely I know, but I am not deluded. If we don’t have optimism how can we get through the next day? It’s a blessing, not a tragedy, take it daily, in equal measures, once in the morning and before bedtime, with water. Be aware of the side effects, creativity, fantasia, elation and sheer bliss. We need to feel that everything is going to be ok, not only our own sake but more importantly for all who depend and rely on us. We need to be a sea of calm and serenity, taking and absorbing others anxiety and actually it’s a story worth…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 20 December 2020
This weeks mobile photography and art showcase is a narrative on life and for many of us, life right now does not offer the freedom it once did… Freedom seems like a luxury, one we all took for granted. What connects people in this showcase and our community of artists is the ability to express ourselves in the ways we most discern, through our art and we keep at it. The sheer ingenuity that you will view today is elegant and strong, engaging and questioning each piece created by independent minds producing compelling artistry. Enjoy. Thank you to all the talented artists for submitting your works to our showcase this week. If…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 15 November 2020
Developing an impregnable sense of self confidence should be the basis for a contented life but however, it is often the first stumbling block. Artists’ falter more than many professions with this, perhaps not so much as comedians, both occupations involve risks but without taking them, we cannot grow. Self-acceptance should never be elusive, it should be something we spend time on encouraging in ourselves as well as honouring in others, never losing the former. Eventually this Covid-cloud we are all living beneath will pass over, but whilst it is still here, its more important than ever to be gentle with our handling of ourselves and with each other. Increased…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 1 November 2020
‘An attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris’ is a book written by Georges Perec and it’s quite wonderful. Perec wrote down everything he could see from a specific viewpoint, which happened to be a public piazza in 1974. He recorded people in the street passing by, the traffic, the birds, a wedding and a later funeral, litter, signs, signals, everything. It’s an elaborate and possibly obsessive glimpse into how the mundane detail can become a series of intimacy and remembrance. As this week in the UK and most of Europe plunge back into ‘lockdown’, or perhaps ‘lock up’ is more appropriate and we all await with shuddering uncertainty the…
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Mobile Photography & Art Instagram Showcase – 20 September 2020
As photographers it can be difficult to know when not to take a photograph. Sometimes these moments are out of our control, perhaps based on ethical, moral or religious grounds. When I look back at the times I chose not to take a photograph one moment stands apart from the others. It was early morning and I was on a train enroute to my job at a paparazzi photo agency. I had a window seat, which was unusual and I noticed her immediately. It was the billowing blue floral dress that caught my eye, it was so summery, so joyous and yet the weather was bleak, cold, dark and it…
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Mobile Photography & Art Instagram Showcase – 16 August 2020
Walk with me.. I’ve been lecturing on Sophie Calle this week. Calle became known for creating emotional artwork from her own personal experiences. She once spontaneously followed and photographed a stranger, a man, all the way to Italy. Another time, she found a lost address book and interviewed and photographed everyone within it about the owner and then published the results in a French newspaper. One time, she chanced a job as a chambermaid in a Venetian hotel, just so she could photograph all the mess and details left behind. Even before my dear friend Tracey Emin portrayed her famous bed, Calle opened up her own bed and invited strangers…
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Mobile Photography & Art Instagram Showcase – 2 August 2020
I think the easiest decision I’ve ever made is in answer to the question of whether I’d like a glass of champagne with my afternoon tea at the Langham Hotel, central London. Oh god, that is not a hard decision to make. I have a collection of great memories, what about that secret room in the bistro in Paris? Oh bliss. And that Bouillabaisse served by waiters who cared enough to even place my handbag on a low stool. When I look back life seemed to be a combination of simple joys with droolworthy salubrious details. I recall walking extremely slowly in the Bois de Boulogne in the 16th arrondissement…
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Mobile Photography & Art Instagram Showcase – 19 July 2020
There is and there always has been a vast difference between a photographer and someone who is interested in photography. David Hurn (Hurn, D and Jay, B. On Being a Photographer. (3rd ed.) 1997. Pp.43-44) explains that the person who becomes a photographer in not interested in photography as an end result but uses photography to pursue an intense interest in something else. This is a very important point because otherwise, photography only becomes about the hardware and it is so fitting in respect of mobile photography. Although mobile photographers are interested in the latest smartphone, iPad’s, the latest add on lenses, filters etc, I have noticed, that that interest…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr/Instagram Showcase 28 June 2020
The desire to belong is one of the greatest driving forces behind TheAppWhisperer.com’s longevity. Roles of photographers and artists have changed throughout history and to many, they can be lonely or isolating pursuits but it is the facility to identify within the structure of a collective, that individuals seek counsel, share ideas and pull each other forward to the benefit of each and everyone. Together, we have created one of the world’s most enduring and successful collectives. Its formation was not incidental, it was born from international experience of 20 years of photographic journalism and discontent with mainstream media’s portrayal of mobile art practice. During lockdown I have been agitating…
