Installation view of the Hipstographs exhibition. Photo courtesy Christopher Matyjasik.

Hipstographs: Experiments in Hi-Fi Lo-Fi, an exhibition currently on display at Gallery M in Castleberry Hill, showcases a collection of nearly 450 small, square photographs by 39 international artists. The images, densely packed into the small gallery space, were all taken exclusively by camera phones, mostly via the iPhone. Before walking into the gallery, I admit, I had a few nagging preconceptions: Cellphones cannot make great photography because the mechanical elements are cheap and poor compared to a “real” camera; Cellphones are the amateur’s tool; Apps take too much control over the photography process, and thus, the images created are no more than digital trickery. After spending some time talking with the curator, Christopher Matyjasik, and some of the show’s photographers, my prejudices began to slip. The magic of the camera phone reminded me of another technological crisis in photography: the creation of the “small camera” in the late half of the 1800s.

In the same way that camera phones have become a ubiquitous tool for image making, challenging preconceptions (at least mine) of photography at the turn of the twenty-first century, it was the small camera in the 19th century that threatened the established order of hand-poured emulsions on glass negatives, dry plate, albumen prints, and other labor intensive hand-crafted processes. It might have been Kodak’s early box camera with its tiny negative, or maybe it was the company’s slogan: “You push the button, we do the rest,” but something about these small cameras upset the traditional order of what was then considered “true” photography. Photography was no longer reserved for alchemists locked away in their darkrooms, meticulously mixing chemicals to the perfect consistency to transform light into a photogenic drawing. Anyone could create photographs; and at the turn of the century, many people did, leading to the term, “snapshot.”

A snapshot encompasses spontaneity, chance, and candidness—coining the phrase, “to capture the magic of a moment.” Light and portable with fast shutters, these small cameras were the perfect tool for encapsulating this new, immediate photographic phenomenon. In turn,the cameras also created a new avenue for photographic expression: Instead of focusing on the “picturesque” or amazing “view,” photography grew into the everyday and all its mundane moments—the smaller and faster instruments allowing photography to intrude into the private lives of individuals. The need for faster, more sensitive material, to be able to capture any snapshot at any time, pushed photographic technology to accommodate the desire of the user. This same push and pull of photographic technology seems to be occurring again with the use of camera phones.

Close-up of a selection of exhibited Hipstamatic photographs. Photo courtesy Christopher Matyjasik.

Just prior to the explosion of camera phones (in the late 1980s and early 1990s), photography underwent a theoretical struggle as digital photography started to become a viable alternative to its film-based precursor. (Most early digital cameras, however, being not even one Megapixel, were fairly slow and optically deficient compared to film). Although digital photography had been practiced since the early 80s, the ambivalence towards the process came to a head in the early 1990s. The fundamental aspect of photography relies on its connection to the real world: a light sensitive material is exposed to light, imprinting a trace of the object onto the medium; something the small cameras of earlier still photography shared with their larger predecessors. Digital photography replaced plates with pixels, grain with digital noise, chemicals with 1’s and 0’s. The connection to the object, for some, was severed, as the chemistry of the process was removed. Much like the photo-traditionalists of the nineteenth century, the early response to digital photography was one of great anxiety. If there was no physical trace of the object, many asked, could the photograph be real? Or, more to the point, could the viewer believe the photograph was “true”? This unraveling of the truth in photography has persisted today, and continues to be a constant topic of theoretical investigation. (Maybe this is one of the reasons for the anxiety I feel when viewing camera phone images.)

Not only has the trace of the real been ripped away from the image via digitization (if you are so inclined to think that way), but the tool, or camera phone, also requires almost no training, and therefore can be used by anyone at any time. Echoing the traditionalists of the nineteenth century, critics have argued over the legitimacy of camera phone photography, especially those images that utilize apps. When Damon Winter, a photojournalist for the New York Times, won third place in Pictures of the Year International (a photojournalism program) using the Hipstamatic app on his iPhone, he was largely criticized for using an inferior tool. In a response article, Winter argued that the complaint is ultimately between content and aesthetics, and that with these apps, people feel that aesthetics are being driven by the camera. But as Winter points out, this practice is not so dissimilar from choosing a particular blend of film and camera, or processing images in photo-editing software.

View of the Hipstographs exhibition using the Hipstamatic app of a camera phone, 2011. Photo courtesy Christopher Matyjasik.

These debates over photographic control versus programming control seem to mirror the arguments propagated by the traditionalists against Kodak over a century ago. We are back to bickering over whether the vision of the photographer is more important than the tool itself; however, just as the small camera created the snapshot, the camera phone has created another way for photography and photographers to interact with the world around them. What Hipstographs displays are not just images from camera phones, but a community of image makers that use the immediacy of the instrument to visually explore their environments. As Christopher Matyjasik explains, “Mobile phone cameras allow the photographer to become almost transparent in a world where it’s common to see mobile phones all about, and to be with camera in all the moments when great pictures show themselves. With thirty-nine contributors and almost five hundred prints, this is the essence of what I wanted to share with Atlanta; with the Hipstographs exhibit I wanted to show a range of photography: from people in Atlanta’s own backyard to NYC, to California, to across the globe; I wanted to show a view of the world from the eye of the professional photographer as well as the view of the stay-at-home mom. What we ended up with is the largest mobile phone photography exhibit anywhere to date.”

Although this exhibit may not have completely freed me of my anxiety towards camera phone photography, it shows that the tools of photography can change how the photographer or casual user approaches the process. With small cameras and camera phones, spontaneity is a main factor; the difference is that the camera phone allows for immediate contact with friends and the world at large. Hipstograph started as a facebook page, and culminated in an exhibition that just might turn the conversation of camera phone photography in a different direction.

Hipstographs: Experiments in Hi-Fi Lo-Fi, featuring 39 artists from around the world and over 450 photographic prints, is currently on display at Gallery M through July 1, 2011. The curator, Christopher Matyjasik, and some of the photographers will host a casual question and answer session this Saturday from 2-5PM at Gallery M.