iPhoneography

Abstract: NOSTALGIA AND IPHONE CAMERA APPS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC VISUAL APPROACH TO IPHONEOGRAPHY By Maria Lourdes De Panbehchi, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2016. Director: Nicholas Andrew Sharp, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of English The iPhone is the most popular smartphone and camera on social media. iPhoneography, the photography taken or edited with the iPhone, has set the trend of nostalgic photography on social media during the 2010s; thus, the iPhone, a high-tech camera, produces low-tech-looking images. This dissertation attempts to find out why iPhone photographers (iPhoneographers) take, edit, and share images that mimic photographs taken with analog photographic equipment. I argue that nostalgia allows iPhoneographers to use the iPhone as a creative tool and to belong to a community. Based on the arguments of Vilém Flusser—who suggested that photographers are more interested in the camera and the process of taking pictures than in the photographs produced—this work focuses first on the iPhone camera and the camera apps. (This work also considers the writings of Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, and W. J. T. Mitchell, as they pertain to photography and iPhoneography.) It traces the beginning of the nostalgic photograph style to 2008, when the Apple App Store offered apps that behaved like toy cameras and rendered images similar to those produced by toy and Polaroid cameras. The Hipstamatic app set the trend in 2009, and Instagram made it mainstream. Nostalgia is more a source of inspiration and creativity than a source of melancholy and longing for the past. The iPhoneography community on Facebook tends to form small groups that share and curate specific topics, such as clouds, portraits, flowers, and images produced with Hipstamatic. A small survey of the iPhoneography community shows that the community considers iPhoneography an art.

Abstract: The iPhone has come to be one of the most popular and widely used cameras because of its ubiquity and the ease with which images can be uploaded directly to sites like Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. The introduction of photography “apps,” like Hipstamatic or Instagram, adds layers of aesthetic capabilities not previously available within the camera. These capabilities have attracted artists seeking technologies for new media of artistic expression. Drawing on Becker’s theory of “art worlds,” this article describes the ways in which iPhone photographers, or iphoneographers, engage in the process of art world building. Through online ethnography and semistructured interviews, this study reveals the ways iphoneographers are creating, sharing, and critiquing their work. The practices of iphoneographers are not unlike those of artists engaged with new media throughout history, and indicate patterns of remediation. Through their activities, the iphoneography community is grappling with issues about the values, ...