Phone Photography

I prefer not to use my phone to take photos. But it is the only camera that I always have with me. It captures moments in the moment. Surely not as pretty as my Fujifilm mirrorless with the cheap-but-sublime Chinese-made prime lens. But it snaps. It’s snappy. I can draw it from my pant-pocket like a cowboy in a duel. Bang, bang. Snap, snap.

What is a tool anyways, if it’s art. Is it art? My snaps are actions. Aesthetics are involved, yes, but rather than being creative actions, they are re-actions to what the world presents to my presence in it. The editing process may be more artistic, but I don’t feel obliged to edit phone photos as much as my “real” camera photos. So they are raw—possibly alive. The moment doesn’t die with the photo as so many philosophers seem to think. It lives again—it is lived again—every time it is looked at. Because I myself lived it. Snapped it.

The world is, as we all know, full of idiots, I mean, miracles (hopefully more of the latter than the former). It is a miracle that someone left their shoes on the sidewalk as if they had entered an invisible door to an invisible house. It is also a miracle that a flock of birds were flying in the exact shape of an eighth rest symbol, possibly telling me to take a rest from my long hours of procrastination. It is a miracle that I pressed the shutter button at that exact moment in that exact spot and made a record of that miracle to recreate its miraculousness in the form of a digitally reproducible image. 

What isn’t a miracle is that I had my phone with me. Because I always have my phone with me. It is the one element that takes the miracle out of photography. But is also the one thing that allows the habitual capturing of miracles.

Did the world appoint me as its capturer of miracles?  No. 

But did the pigeon strike its best pose and determine the framing of the entire shot with its imperturbable straightness, practically demanding it be photographed and photographed correctly? Yes. 

Did the two beer cans, sitting below the young man on his way to an important date, conspire to point to the exact spot where I should stand to take the photograph? Yes. 

Do scenes in daily life interpellate me into the role of recording its most intriguing moments? I would say so.

So here I am. Called upon to do one job in three steps: observe, draw phone from pocket, and snap, snap. 

I must say that I take my job very seriously. It is an occupation on a cosmic scale. I am an employee of the cosmos. I make pieces of the universe last longer than an instant. Cosmic time undergoes prolongation as to be more easily observable to our synchronic human brains. It is an honorable service of ontological significance.

So there. 

There is the very legitimate reason (excuse) that I deserve (want) the new iPhone 16 Pro Max. It is for the good of the universe and my consumeristic exploitability has nothing to do with it.