Paeans have been sung about the ease with which cellphones allow one to shoot, and also on their unobtrusiveness. But the real simplicity of cellphones, I believe, lies in the whole package. I’m not just talking about the weight, or the stripped down settings, but the whole gamut—right from shooting, selecting the right image, postprocessing, and sharing, along with the various platforms themselves. For me, this ease of use just means one thing—more photography than I would do with a DSLR and a place to create a virtual contact sheet. But for many of us, it can mean many things, it can mean the ability to share every single moment (regardless of whether it merits that kind of exposure), it can mean virtual tours of places we’ve never seen, or the ability to see what our favourite author, musician, or designer is doing with their personal or professional life. For many of us, cellphone photography is all about access. This kind of unprecedented access and visual recording of our collective history is something that excites me and annoys me in equal parts. It annoys me because we’re not being selective enough about what we choose to share, we’re not editing our sharing of information enough, and I don’t mean censorship, I mean being critical of every photo we post, be it the coffee or tea we had for breakfast, or a funny street shot. I fear that when historians look back at this epoch, all they will see is memes and badly shot cupcakes and coffee.
This article originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of Better Photography.