Small and lightweight enough to fit into a person’s palm, the cellphone camera has become a significant chronicler of our times. By virtue of it’s ease of use, its fluidity, and the fact that it accompanies us everywhere we go, people worldwide are suddenly able to record, document and interpret their lives to a degree not previously known in history.
Even in the hands of the serious photographer, the smartphone camera has become what the sketchbook has traditionally been for the painter––an immediate and quick means of making visual studies of life’s infinite moments. Also, in perhaps a more liberating way, the cellphone camera, loaded with its infinite number of filters, is a powerful mobile darkroom, free of fumes, toxic chemicals, and the logistics of getting film developed and prints made. In the 19th Century, William Henry Jackson traversed the western United States in a mule-drawn darkroom photographing with hugh glass plates. Today we traverse the globe carrying our darkrooms in our hands.
This blog, iDiarist, started 17 March 2012, and having the same title of a book I self-published in 2010 (www.perambulationpress.com), which was a collection of mostly experimental images I created with the iPhone, will pick up where that book left off, though with minimal manipulation.
–Roger Minick
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