Aim well, shoot fast, and scram." -- Henri Cartier-Bresson
If Cartier-Bresson was still taking photos today, he would ditch his Leica and be taking photos with an iPhone. At least, that is the view of Knox Bronson, a curator, composer and iPhoneographer who has been gathering a stunning gallery of iPhone photos on his site: P1XELS the art of the iPhone.
Bronson, who is a purist, is only interested in collecting photos that have not in any way been manipulated outside of the phone by a computer:
Early on, I discovered, to my great dismay, that some people, even well-known iPhonographers, manipulated their pictures on the computer. This instantly seemed wrong. I knew that the only way to keep the medium pure was to not allow computer manipulation: otherwise we would just be another Photoshop site, of which there were and are thousands. I hold true to this tenet to this day: the art form is defined by the device, the iPhone itself.
There are, of course many applications that can be used directly on the iPhone to create effects. For anyone who would like to learn more about these applications, Bronson recommends a visit to the site: Life in Lo-Fi: iPhoneography.
iPhoneography, which Bronson characterizes as "an underground art form emerging from its infancy," is the subject of a real world exhibition, on view at the Orange County Center For Contemporary Art through April 28th. The slideshow below features Bronson's hand-picked selection of 10 images from the show.
