Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 29 November 2020
Art can take you anywhere and nowhere more immediately or more variously than within our mobile photography and art showcase this week. It abounds with hidden treasures: the world seen and understood through the mind and gifts of each artist. Enjoy! Thank you to all the talented artists for submitting your works to our showcase this week. If you would like your work to be considered for entry in to our weekly Mobile Photography and Art Flickr Group, please submit it to our dedicated group, here. You can also submit images to our Instagram tag for this section#theappwhisperer. Karen Axelrad, Vadim Demjianov, David DeNagel, Jun Yamaguchi, Clint Cline, Susan Rennie, Rita Colantonio, Kathy…
Mobile Art – Draw The Line #TAWidentity Challenge
Huge thanks to our curators and editors of our Draw the Line Column, Carol Wiebe and Peter Wilkin for selecting these wining images to our latest challenge and also for creating the wonderful accompanying video showcase. “With over 200 tagged images entered in our latest challenge ‘Identity’, selecting just nine of them for our showcase was predictably difficult yet simultaneously extremely enjoyable. The standard of your art, as it always is, was incredible. The vast majority of images focused on people & portraits: some of them were self-portraits whilst some featured other people. After hours of deliberation I finally settled on the nine pieces below, although I could easily have…
Mobile Photography & Art Instagram Showcase – 6 September 2020
Many photographers draw on literary influences on which to base their images. Hannah Starkey used Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1832 poem The Lady of Shalott as a reference point for a body of work exhibited at Maureen Paley Gallery in 2010. In the poem, The Lady of Shalott is subject to a curse. She is only able to view the real world refectled through a mirror. Temptation ensues and she sneaks a glimpse at a knight’s shining sword, looks out of the window and dies. This is a very brief gist of the poem but the idea is that if you only view the world through shadows of reality through reflections…
Mobile Photography & Art Instagram Showcase – 23 August 2020
Not all self-portraiture includes the photographer, sometimes it is possible to use other people to stand in. I mentioned Sophie Calle‘s work last week and her series ‘Take Care of Yourself 2007-2009), is an example of this. Some photographers use people in a metaphoric sense, I’m thinking of Maria Kapajevea, in ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, 2012-ongoing’) or some choose not to include anyone in the picture at all (Nigel Shafran, Washing-up 2000). All of these approaches are classified as self-absented portraiture, similar to self-portraiture but none include the photographer in a literal sense. In many ways, physically, I have started to feel that maybe I…
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…
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…
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…
Mobile Photography & Art Flickr/Instagram Showcase – 5 July 2020
Mobile photography and art has a way of forming, shaping and holding in front of our eyes something we feel inside. It’s about storytelling, enabling viewers to develop a narrative of their lives and relate to their own experiences, in a new way. And, it is for this reason that I have curated and published this weeks showcase. Having spent Friday afternoon in hospital for surgery and suffering pain since, unable to sleep, unable to turn, unable to get out of bed, I wasn’t convinced I would be able to put on this show. However, I turned to my mainstay, culture as a cure. And what a great healer it…
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 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…
