15 Years Ago Today…the day that changed how we do, uhm…everything
Today’s article is a little different than most I write. Today I want to celebrate the camera that changed a lot about the world, photography, and who practices it. ~dnj
Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone…An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator…These are not three separate devices: This is one device, and we are calling it iPhone…a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.
–Steve Jobs, Apple Keynote Speech, January 9, 2007
On January 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood on the stage and did what he had always done best throughout his career. He gave us something we never knew we needed or wanted, but that shortly thereafter would wonder how we ever lived without it. For on that day, he introduced us to the first iPhone.
In business circles, the iPhone introduction is considered one of the best business presentations in corporate history, not just Apple's. I'm not joking. Google it.
Fifteen years later, the pronouncements made by others about the iPhone seem both quaint and shocking: Techcrunch and AdAge predicted in no uncertain terms that the iPhone would fail. The NY Times said the phone was "not ... for everyone" and called it a "gamble." Then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told USA Today in April of 2007, "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." (In 2016, Ballmer admitted to Bloomberg that he had been wrong about the iPhone.) The then joint CEOs of RIM, the maker of the Blackberry (the what?), pronounced, "It's OK, we'll be fine." (They weren't.* )
When the iPhone shipped to customers on June 29, 2007, it lacked almost everything we now consider needed in a phone. The screen was small; it had no third-party apps; it had only 16GB of memory at the high end; it ran only on At&T's notoriously poorly-performing EDGE network. It didn't matter. As release events happened worldwide, the Apple faithful and the early adopters of anything new and cool in tech lined up outside of Apple Stores for days beforehand to be one of the first to own an iPhone.
So it was that Apple made history yet again. Today no one doubts that Jobs was right: that so-called "gamble" propelled Apple to stratospheric heights. As of December 23, 2021, Apple remains the most valuable company globally by roughly $400 billion, with a market cap of $2.9 trillion. (The stock grew 30% in 2021 alone.) Hundreds of millions of people worldwide now own the phone that fundamentally altered the entire mobile industry, as well as the fate of stand-alone music players, GPS devices, and low-end to midrange digital cameras.
And that last thing brings me to why I write today. It was not only that the iPhone changed the course of the phone industry, but its camera fundamentally altered the place of photography in the world. (That latter has brought both good and bad. I'll leave it for others to detail the many negatives. I want to focus on the good.)
The iPhone was not the first phone with a camera. Samsung's SCH-V200, released in Korea in June 2000, was. Its built-in digital camera was capable of taking 20 photos at 0.35-megapixels. You had to hook it up to a computer to get your photos, as it was essentially a separate device housed within the phone body.
I remember getting my first camera phone, a Nokia, in 2003. The pictures it took were minuscule, but the only digital camera I owned was a "toy" one called Jam Cam, which took about the same image quality. I would not kid anyone into believing those early phones were by any imaginative stretch "good cameras." I jokingly call myself a "lazytographer" because I always hated carrying any equipment. I was just as happy to use my phone and not carry any extra weight; it was easy to always have it with me. The following image was the only example that I found easily in my files. Taken at dusk with a thin, lightweight 2006 LG "chocolate bar phone," it's an example of just how bad those cameras indeed were. I knew how to rez up images cleanly using Photoshop plugins, and I was using the photos in digital printmaking works that were not incredibly photographic-looking. I could fix it up in Photoshop to make it read a little better. (I even used this image for several semesters to teach specific kinds of photoshop tools, just because it needed *so much help* it was an easy choice to make someone feel they improved something quickly.)
An Apple user and phone camera fan, I was a natural candidate to get the iPhone upon release in 2007. But it was way out of our price range, contracts hinging consumers to specific companies were still a 'thing,' and we were not AT&T customers. We had been T-Mobile customers since it was PrimeCo in the late '90s and did not want to deal with the costs of breaking contracts. Plus, T-Mobile kept assuring us they would be getting the iPhone "soon." Their definition must be like waiting for anything on island time, where "Soon come" really means, "Sit down and cool your jets. You are going to wait quite a while." Eventually, they got an iPhone wanna-be, the Bumble, or something like that, and we got them. After a year or so of using what we considered fake iPhones - and deeply unsatisfying ones at that - we decided to bite the bullet, move service to AT&T, and get iPhones. It took a two-hour "won't let us off the phone session" inside the T-Mobile store to get our numbers changed over. I guess they were losing many customers to At&T and were determined to keep us. Two days after the iPhones were in our hands, we looked at each other and said at the same time, "I don't know how I ever lived without this." I added, "It's like having my Mac with a camera in my pocket."
It would be two years after the introduction before the app store opened and a couple more years before the camera and photo apps matured enough to be considered "good." Almost every subsequent release has incrementally or drastically improved the camera, and the apps keep getting better. The most popular camera in history -the iPhone- has so changed retail that stores like Costco no longer sell cameras at all. (In fact, last night, I read a prediction that said the iPhone 14 might have a 48 MP camera. Sign me up!)
I don't think I need to tell you; I'm sold on this. It's not a toy for me. It's the camera I shoot 99% of my work on. I've never really looked back. It's annoying and sometimes upsetting when people blindly dismiss it as a toy. And heck, if people can make great images without a camera, or with an oatmeal tin, or a Holga, would it matter that it was one? Use the tool that works for what you want to say, live and let live, and stop telling others what is wrong with their equipment. I would never presume to tell someone using a camera of their choice why they shouldn't, but it seems that thought process only stretches away from the iPhone crowd more than it stretches towards us. Sometimes people think they are giving me a compliment when they say, "I love this! I would never guess it was iPhone. I thought you shot film." I know they mean it nicely, but the backhand is there with the compliment.
I wanted to show work from the camera done over the years. I focused on work that is either not modified or lightly modified to talk about the camera and not apps or mobile art. (There is a different story in the latter, and it's not something that One Twelve covers, so I am sticking with the basics.) I did seek out imagery from the earlier iPhones for the gallery here. I had selected a few images made between 2009-12, but I also decided to write this on two weeks' notice. In the end, things didn't work out for me to show all the images I had wanted to. The work here ranges from 2014-2021.
clicking the thumbnail will bring the image up in a lightbox.
Rob DePaolo's work is often dark and pointed or ironic and humourous. He brought his years of film expertise to his phone work, and it shows. It's quite a feat to have created a double exposure work this well crafted using just a phone in 2014.
Cecily Mariece Caceau's work is strictly phone and dramatically varies in subject matter. I was drawn to this strange little auto in the middle of the street, looking out of place with the buildings that inhabit it. It turns out she wishes for it to invade her dreams.
I remember when Lee Atwell created this image and series I have shown here. When I first saw it, I fell in love with the imagery and the spirit endowed throughout the image, and seven years later, I still feel the same. When I first saw it, though I was aware that Atwell's mother had passed, I did not realize the image was literally about her mother's spirit. The black and white treatment suits the imagery perfectly. We focus on the gesture instead of the impact color has in reading the image and its meaning.
Catherine Panebianco shoots with both cameras and her phone. Panebianco made this image while we were both enrolled in an online class offered by Laura Valenti. I remember first seeing this image and saying, "I wish I had made this." I still feel the same, seven years after. The color and the props speak volumes.
Lisa Mitchell's work varies between the genre of mobile art and "straight" photography. She has a series of images of women in the open landscape near her home in the UK, and they are quirky, unusual images, of which this beauty is one. The slightly desaturated treatment enhances the idea she is working with, melancholy.
Ileana Montaño's image shown here is entirely different than most of her work as I know it, which I would consider more "mobile art." This one is straightforward: simple, tender, feminine, and inviting.
I feel rather lucky that the inimitable photographer and educator Douglas Beasley allowed me to use this image in the article. Known for his zen approach to photography, Beasley works primarily with medium format film, though he occasionally makes images with his phone as well because "They both still require an eye, a heart, and a soul." His image shown here is a unique exploration of what constitutes beauty, made using a phone app that approximates the look of tintypes.
Kate Zari Roberts picked up an iPhone and put down her camera. That changed her photographic work forever, as it now varies between the mobile art genre and straight photography work. This image is a fine example of her sensitive camera treatment of nature.
Gina Costa is well known inside and outside the iPhone community for her curatorial and teaching work in addition to photography. This image is from an ongoing series, begun in 2016, documenting the great American Road trip in the style of the photographic greats who have gone this path before her, updated for the phone age.
Cindy Buske shoots with her phone, mainly using Hipstamatic. Though employed FT in healthcare, she makes time to shoot creative portraiture and landscape work, something of a challenge for a healthcare professional in the past two years. I have always been drawn to the portraits Buske calls '"collaborations" with her daughter. They are beautiful, creative, and exciting works. Silver Screen is a particularly stunning one that absolutely brings us back to the imagery of the golden era of Hollywood screen stars.
Glenn Homann is based in Australia and works exclusively using the phone. He has a fantastic eye for captivating color and structure, and this image represents other work of his that is equally stunning.
Paul David Shea is somewhat new to photography. This image in a Facebook photography group caught my eye. I loved the blurred motion and the sedate, subdued color scheme that forced me to look more closely.
Karen Klinedinst needs no introduction for most readers. She has shown us her reverence for the land for many years, and this image is no different. One glance and it would be impossible to mistake it for another photographer's work. It's majestic.
I hope you enjoyed this trip through the history of iPhones and the work of some people who are using them.
Thank you to the photographers who allowed me to use their work in this article. You have provided me with a great walk down memory lane.
Those readers who wholeheartedly embrace the phone may find themselves reminded of works you remember from FB groups or Instagram, or perhaps be a bit nostalgic for your old phone cameras and how you worked your creations within them.
Casual phone shooters may find themselves inspired by what others have done with both phones of yesteryear and today.
The diehard disbelievers out there reading this will most likely find a way to pick at the seams of these images, telling themselves all the ways the pictures would have much better served them by being created using a "real" camera. But I'm not out to change those minds. I can't. If there is no crack for the light to get in, things remain in the dark. And I suppose that's fine; I'm not trying to turn the world into a horde of iPhonographers. Every camera and tool has a place, and every photographer has tools that work best for what they do and how they work.
Those who are unsure or had mixed feelings about the phone as a "real" camera...I hope I have pushed that cracked door open all the way and shown you some work that might encourage you to look differently at mobile photography (and perhaps, do more with your phone than use it as an ever-present snapshot taker.) Because it truly is a "real camera."
Thanks for reading.
*As a side note, on January 4, 2022, the Blackberry network shut down forever. I had no idea it even still existed.
Artist Statements/Bios
I asked the artists to provide me with a short statement about the images I selected to feature, along with a 500-character artist’s bio. The underscore in their name is the link to their website or IG account for further exploration of their works.
LEE ATWELL - The Space Between (2015/iPhone 5s)
The Space Between is from my series Soul Journey, dedicated to my deceased mother. She was an avid photographer and nature lover who also carried a lifelong burden of a mental health ailment. After she passed, I found an old coat of hers in the closet. I noted its heaviness and imagined her small frame under that weight. It struck me that it was a symbol of the illness she endured. I took the coat to a rural landscape and photographed myself wearing it as it flew around me, metaphorically setting both her spirit as well as my grief free.
Lee Atwell is an award-winning photographer currently based in Indiana. She has exhibited nationally and internationally; venues include PH21 Photography Gallery (HN), Mira Forum (PT), and the Tularosa Gallery (NM), among others. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, both print and virtual including the 2017 book, ”100 Great Street Photographs”, Mobiography Magazine, and an editorial feature at Lens Culture. Awards include the Lens Culture Street Photography Award, the Mira Mobile Prize, the IPPA, and the Mobile Photo Award. From 2016-18, Atwell curated and wrote a column on street photography for The App Whisperer, a prominent site about Mobile Art/Photo.
DOUGLAS BEASLEY - What’s Broken Can Be Repaired, Kat at Trade River, WI (2018/iPhone 10)
Photography often uses the visible to speak of what is invisible. What here is broken beyond the obvious? Are photographs about a place, a moment in time, the subject, or the photographer? I want my images to reflect each of these aspects in different proportions according to the situation or my whim; then maybe even invoke the viewer’s participation in this question. Ideally, I’d like my photos to transcend these designations, asking more questions than they answer, yet still be rooted in the situation in which they were created.
Douglas Beasley’s personal vision explores the spiritual aspects of people and place. His photography is concerned with how spirit is recognized and expressed in everyday life. Exhibited and published internationally, grants and commissions fund much of his personal work. He is also the founder and director of Vision Quest Photo Workshops. Doug’s extensive teaching experience includes numerous workshops worldwide which emphasize heart, soul, and vision over the mechanics of camera use. He is also the inventor of Vision Quest Cards, which provide photo assignments for visual and spiritual growth.
CINDY BUSKE - Silver Screen (2020/iPhone 10)
I frequently collaborate with my daughter, Anja, for portraiture work. For Silver Screen, we used modern tools to conjure a vision of a Hollywood ‘silver screen’ siren of a bygone era, timeless in quality and beauty.
Cindy Buske is a fine art photographer from the Seattle area. Her imagery has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at venues such as the Mira Forum (PT) and Pel Meni (WA). Awards include the Mira Mobile Prize, the iPhone Photography Awards, the Mobile Photography Awards, and the National Geographic Your Shot Awards. Publications featuring her work include Better Photography and Donna Moderna magazines.
CECILY MARIECE CACEU - Chaumont en Vexin (2014/iPhone 5s)
Escaping the monotony that invades my daily life, I have a recurring dream of getting lost in a French village (though I know it’s a false narrative. ) When visiting France, I happened upon this tiny car against an ancient wall full of stones and stories. I hungered to have it appear in those dreams, to whisper its secrets to me in the night.
Cecily Mariece Caceu is a Portland, Oregon-based photographer /mixed media artist. Caceu’s work has been shown at LightBox Gallery (OR), Newspace (OR) and PhotoPlace (VT). She was a featured artist in the 2013 book “The Art of iPhone Photography” as well as the 2014 edition of “Mobile Masters.” Recognition for her work includes the 2017 Mira Mobile Prize shortlist, the 2013 IPA, and the 2012-14 Mobile Photo Awards. Her work can be found in both public and private collections.
GINA COSTA - Untitled Gas Station from My American Road Trip series (2019/iPhone 12)
This image is from my ongoing series “My American Road Trip” shot in Elkhart, Indiana in 2019. This series began in 2016 as I traveled about the USA struck by the visual culture of the quotidian, and how this evoked the romance of the American road trip. A straightforward deadpan, ironic portrayal of the subject matter, is the hallmark of the visual vocabulary that is the history and tradition of American road photography. From Walker Evans and Robert Frank to Ed Ruscha and Stephen Shore, to the recent voices in the ballad of the highway, the vision of the open road was how photographers embraced the subject of America in order to reflect on place, time, memory, and self. A gas station, a billboard alongside of the road, a diner shut down for the day, are all the iconic images captured by the American photographers who established this visual tradition of neglected beauty. My series seeks to continue this tradition, as I explore the vast wonders of the quirky yet poetic visual culture of the American road.
Gina Costa is a photographic artist, museum professional, and independent curator. She has graduate degrees in art history from the University of Chicago, and has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, The Art Institute of Chicago, and has taught at several universities and colleges. Winner of the 2018 and 2019 Julia Margaret Cameron Photography awards, and the 2016 Latin American Photography awards, her work has also been featured in Lensculture, F-Stop Magazine, and Lenscratch. She has taught workshops about mobile photography in the US and Europe, and is an internationally known, published, award-winning photographer.
ROB DEPAOLO - Inner Conflict (2014/iPhone 5s)
Inner Conflict began as a simple experiment. I wanted to create the same kind of double exposure that I had done with film cameras in the past. That quickly evolved to a different sort of image, one that depicts the inner tension and self-competition which is a natural part of the human condition.
Rob DePaolo is an internationally-exhibited and award-winning conceptual photographer. His work has been included in many exhibitions both physical and digital including: Masks (2016), SE Center for Photography, Greenville, South Carolina; Manus et Pedibus (2016), Darkroom Gallery, Essex Junction, VT; Imagined Realities (2016), PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT; Black and White (2015), Darkroom Gallery, Essex Junction, VT; Mobile Photo Now (2015), Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; and Shadow Stories (2014), Holcim Gallery, Milton, ON, Canada.
GLENN HOMANN - X-ing (2020/iPhone 11 Pro)
X-ing is an attempt to create a compelling composition with as few elements as possible. Light, shadow, and color combine to paradoxically reveal both the mundanity and vibrancy of our urban environments.
Glenn Homann is a photographer based in Brisbane, Australia, who has made exclusive use of the iPhone to create his images. Fully embracing the concept of having the camera at hand at all times has resulted in a diverse catalog of work, with a strong emphasis on color and composition. He is intent on pushing the technological features of the device to the limit and progressing as these perceived limitations evolve. Some of his more minimal work has been featured in exhibitions and competitions around the world.
KAREN KLINEDINST- The Endless Afternoon (2021/iPhone 12 Pro MaX)
All of us have a deep connection to certain places. We see these places not as they are but idealize them through our memories. The Endless Afternoon was photographed with my iPhone 12 Pro Max at Chincoteague Island in Virginia in early September 2021. My husband had been diagnosed with Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer just days before. Immediately following his diagnosis, we traveled to Chincoteague so we could process the enormity of this news surrounded by nature in a place we both held dear. We spent several days on the island riding our bikes, walking on the beach, and swimming in the ocean. It was the pregnant pause between the life we knew before and the life we were about to embark on.
Karen Klinedinst is an artist using photography to explore themes of place, nature and the environment. Inspired by 19th century landscape paintings of the Hudson River School, she creates richly layered landscapes that combine the real with the imagined. Her work has been exhibited at the University of Maryland Global College, Center for Photographic Arts, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, and the Biggs Museum of American Art. Her series, The Emotional Landscape, was exhibited at the Griffin Museum of Photography. She is a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art and teaches iPhone Photography courses at Johns Hopkins University.
LISA MITCHELL - Madness & Melancholy (2017/iPhone 6)
Madness and melancholy depicts the emptiness we feel when we lose that physical or emotional intimacy with another, and how love can drive the sane to madness.
Lisa Mitchell is an artist from the East Midlands of England. She was awarded a BA Degree in Fashion & Textiles from De Montfort University, where she also completed further studies towards an MFA. Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions; solo venues include Sam Scorer Gallery (EN) and Gallery Saint Martins (EN). Additionally, Mitchell’s imagery has appeared on television and CD covers and in publications such as Vogue Italia. Mitchell’s works are held in public and private collections worldwide. Awards include the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, Honorable Mention in Portraiture.
ILEANA MONTAÑO- Lazy Day series #1 (2018-iPhone X)
To delight at the body's mysteries is one of the most luscious particularities of photography. The camera celebrates an awes at the intimacy of its parts, and of course, at the most enticing creases and folds, its complexity, and perfection. It delights at the texture and the color of the skin and the expression of its pose. It relishes in the light that reveals the poetry of its shapes.
Mexico City-based visual artist Ileana Montaño is an award-winning photographer who started her career as a professional in graphic communications and advertising. Her work has been exhibited in Brazil, South Korea, the United States, Hungary, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, India, Argentina, and Japan. In 2017 she presented her first solo exhibition, "Fragmentos de Luz", in Mexico City. She has also been published in Better Photography magazine and featured and collaborated in renowned blogs about mobile art and photography.
CATHERINE PANBIANCO- Dance Partner to the Moon (2015-iPhone 6)
I have always searched for place, both a place to live and my place in the world. As a child, I moved around a lot. I had a stable family life but an unstable home. I craved that feeling of a sense of place and where I felt most “at home.” This image explores my search for both a physical place, but also an emotional home.
Catherine Panebianco is an artist whose work longs for a sense of place, catches hold of memories, and chases the spirts of those we currently love, and those that continue surround us from our past. Panebianco received the 2020 LensCulture Critics Choice Top Ten Award, 2020 CENTER’s Project Launch Award and was a 2019 Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50. Her work has been exhibited and featured widely in the U.S. and internationally. Yoffy Press will publish a monograph of her work in March 2022. (Instagram: @panebiancophotos Facebook: @PanebiancoPhotography)
KATE ZARI ROBERTS- The Peace of the Lotus (2019/iPhone XS Max)
I’m always drawn to beautiful light, form and reflection and felt an instant connection and tenderness for this Lotus flower, which is seemingly both suspended and held.
Kate Zari Roberts is an intuitive photographer with a passion for a meditative approach to the land and light. Her work explores the paradoxes of form/emptiness, stillness/movement and light/dark. She has worked with a 4x5 camera, a medium format camera, and the iPhone. Kate has worked professionally as a garden and architectural photographer in the USA, England and South Africa. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and books worldwide. Kate has won numerous awards such as the Julia Margaret Cameron Award and the Pollux Award, and her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries nationally and internationally. (FB Kate Zari Roberts IG one.fine.eye.phone)
PAUL DAVID SHEA - Man Without A Face (2021/iPhone 12 Pro Max)
See me for who I am, not for what you see. What you see is hardly what you get. Self-portraiture, for me, is perhaps one of the most difficult forms of art to create. This image portrays just that. Sometimes when we look in a mirror, what we see in ourselves is far different then how we are seen. There is a much deeper aspect to our humanness, but so often it is hidden behind a mask of distortion and fear. Fear of stepping into our own true self. Not liking what we see. What would people look like if we could see them as they truly are? We should always try to go deeper than the surface if we can. Reach for the sublime existence underneath. Not the face, but the soul. There is where you will find me.
Paul David Shea was born in Plymouth, MA in 1965. He received his AA from Quincy College and his AS degree in Sound Engineering from Full Sail University. His deep passion for making photographic art has won him several accolades in various gallery shows throughout the U.S. including David Orton Gallery’s 7th Annual Group Show and Internationally at PH21 Gallery in Bulgaria, to name a few. Shea has been published in Shots Magazine and Photographers Without Boarders Journal. Currently he is authoring his first photography and poetry book due this spring.
Diana Nicholette Jeon is an award-winning artist based in Honolulu, HI, who works primarily with lens-based media. Her work has been seen both internationally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Jeon holds an MFA from UMBC.