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…
Mobile Photography & Art Instagram/Flickr Group Showcase – 21 June 2020
“Photography is a foreign language everyone thinks they speak“, DiCorcia (1993-1994) cited in Galassi (1995). Photography is a language, adopted as a means of expression and communication or as an accompaniment to words. It has its own set of grammatical rules and codes. How we read an image is determined by our own personal background factors. A universal photographic language does not exist when compared to a spoken or written language. Photography as a language is more to do with an interpretation rather than a direct translation of information. Language connects people and it also divides them, any language only works if it’s understood. This weeks mobile photography and art…
Mobile Photography & Art Flickr/Instagram Showcase – 14 June 2020
“In these last decades ‘concerned’ photography has done at least as much to deaden conscience as to arouse it”, Sontag, S. On Photography (1979). Sontag argued that beleaguering the public with sensationalist photographs of war and poverty was a definitive way to numb the public’s response. Sontag believed that the more distressing images people viewed, the more immune they became to their impact; viewers became reduced to inaction, either through guilt or a dismissive lethargy towards making a difference. Sontag reversed this view in Regarding the Pain of Others (2004), but ‘compassion fatigue’ is still used as an argument against war imagery today. I have been thinking about this a…
Mobile Photography and Art Flickr/Instagram Showcase – 31 May 2020
“The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon the possibility of freedom – and thus its significance – in a world dominated by apparatuses [cameras], to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us”. A quote from Towards a Philosophy of Photography by Vilém Flusser, 2000, I’ve been reading this week. It’s an interesting account modelling a distinction between ‘light writing’ (photography) and writing text itself. It’s a good academic…
Mobile Photography and Art Flickr/Instagram Showcase – 10 May 2020
‘Literature is the most powerful means we have for communicating consciousness’, said author Garth Greenwell. The author of a new book, ‘Cleanness’ which I have yet to read, as I am currently rereading his debut ‘What belongs to you’, a book that has served Greenwell, so well. It’s not the subject that draws me as much as the equisite literature that soaks every line. However, I believe good art can be the most powerful means we have for communicating consciousness. The kind of art that worms its way into a person’s being, art that imbues our lives, illuminating our innermost thoughts with eloquence, compassion. Art teaches us to be more…
Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 5 April 2020
Influenced by Susan Sontag, Maggie Nelson and Elaine Scarry, ‘The Art of the Body’ by Alexander Allison has perhaps been my fastest read yet. Not that there’s any race with reading, but sometimes, it’s so impossible for me to put a book down, that even when making dinner, I’ll prop a book open and this is what happened to me during this further week of lock down 2020. ‘The Art of the Body’ is a book about a woman, Janet, who cares a lot. She cares about what people think of her, she cares about the opportunities she’s wasted, she cares about the hurt she’s caused. But Janet is also…
Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 29 March 2020
It is a glorious spring day outside, there was a beautiful dawn chorus emitting from the garden birds this morning, the flowering bushes are starting to blossom. There’s a cold east wind but the piercing sun heats up our glass roofed conservatory, where I am writing this column with so much warmth, I envisage I am basking on a warm coastline, cocktail in hand. Of course, the realisation that Coronovirus was going to be a very serious problem came to me several weeks ago. My husband was interviewing a photographer in Northern Italy, before the lockdown, but after the schools had closed. He spoke about all the teenagers hanging around,…
Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 22 March 2020
22 March 2020, Mother’s Day, England, “fear educates our care for each other – we fear a sick person might be made sicker, or that a person’s life might be made even more miserable and we do whatever we can to protect them because we have a fear a version of human life in which everyone lives only for themselves. I am not the least bit afraidd of this fear, for fear is a vital and necessary part of life“, observed poet Anne Boyer. This week, like many of us, I’ve immersed myself in art, both written and visual. I found myself, once more, drawn to Bleak House by Charles…
Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 15 March 2020
“Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.” ―E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops and the first book that I immediately reread thrice, when I was thirteen. It was the first book that interrupted my thought processes enough to relieve me of outside pressures. It was transient, like a…
Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 9 February 2020
“I’m with Edvard Munch, who said photography can’t compete with painting, because it can’t deal with heaven or hell”, said David Hockney in today’s Sunday Times. I’m inclined to disagree with this and of course, I can point to this weeks showcase to support my case. Our musical choice matches perfectly, love, loss and the nature of reality. Heaven and hell? Oh yes, having lived full lives, if we cannot cure mortality, should we at least die trying…? The one thing humans have to save them of the depths of despair is humour and like many I have a strong one, Hockney does too “Do you know why laughter is…
