Media Experiment #2

Telephone vs. Photography

I use the phone everyday. Especially now with cell phones: portable, pocket-sized, everyone has one. I feel foolish when I leave the house without it. What is there is an emergency, or I get lost. How will anyone know where I am. How will I know where anyone else it.

I use my phone without even thinking about it. There is no framing, or explicitly deciding “I’m taking this with me.” Most of the times I just grab it without even thinking about it. Putting my phone in my bag is like getting dressed in the morning: it has to be done before you can leave the house. Using it is hardly a production, either. I take it out when I want, and no one pays much attention to the fact that I’m using it. people can go about their daily business. If I pass someone on the street and they have a phone out, my first thought isn’t “What on earth are they doing with that thing?” I’m not curious about it. And no one is curious about what I’m doing with my. Phones have become like peoples arms: we can trust it will always be there, and if it’s not then something has gone terribly wrong.

Photography, on the other hand, is much different. Unlike the phone, we decide to take a camera with us. There is a decision making process for most of us to carry the extra weight of a camera with us to a specific location. Do I have room for this camera? Will I need to take pictures? There are “picture-worthy events,” which is hardly the case for a phone. Everything is a phone worthy event, and we always have room for our phones. Cameras seem to be one piece of technology that remains something that people do not take with them everywhere. People are still curious about a person with a camera. When someone takes out a camera, people look towards the lens. We worry whether we will look good for the camera. There is an “exposure” element to being in a picture, and even more of a vulnerability if you are in fact the person with the camera. People will stare at you, wonder what you’re taking pictures of, maybe even ask you to stop. Cameras have no quite blended in with the framework of society. I don’t use my camera very often, but when I do, there is a specific reasoning behind it.

However, those lines are beginning to blur with the no growing popularity of camera-phones. Where before they were completely separate spheres, and most people didn’t use “camera” and “phone” even in the same sentence, I now carry a camera wherever I carry my phone. The camera phone, as Sontag puts in in her book "On Photography," I feel has truly established the "chronic voyeuristic relation" that she discusses; now we feel we are much more inclined to take pictures of anything, anywhere, and of anyone. The camera phone makes us feel entitled. With the camera phone, it makes every subject seem the same. When we take a photograph with our camera phone, I would argue it loses any "specialness" the subject has, or as Sontag puts it, puts all subjects at the same level. When I took a photo before, I did it for an explicit purpose. But now since I always have a camera with me on my phone, I snap photos without really thinking of what I'm taking a picture of.

As the technology increases, these camera-phone shots are hardly blurry snapshots taken for no reason, they are high quality. I definitely notice a use of cameras more now that I can use it in the same way as I use a phone - without much thought. Much like the phones themselves, the camera aspect of a phone has become something that is expected. While I am certinly trying to achieve something different with a camera vs. a phone, or even a camera vs. a camera-phone, the use of both of these has increased for me.