Hang Up and Shoot

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As the birthplace of photography, France occupies a storied place in the craft's history. For almost two centuries, its avenues, parks and cafes have inspired the likes of Eugène Atget, George Brassaï, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson … and Nadine Bénichou.

Like the better-known names, Ms. Bénichou's work has been exhibited in Paris. But unlike in past generations, her oeuvre is more portable: she takes pictures with her cellphone. She is among 18 photographers whose work was featured in a large show, “Mobile Photo Paris,” at the Bastille Design Center last week.

Photography has always been a dynamic medium, characterized by rapidly evolving tools and technology. Just think of the tectonic shifts it has undergone since the French inventors Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre were tinkering with heliographs and daguerreotypes. In the past 186 years, photography has evolved from tintypes to wet plate negatives to roll film to digital sensors.

Mobile photography has caught on even faster. No sooner did cellphones begin masquerading as cameras - or vice versa - than people began using them as a means of creative expression, a documentary tool and a way to share art. Today, smartphones are the most popular cameras on the market, and photo-sharing is the No. 1 use of social media.

“Up until now, most of what people have seen of mobile photography has been online,” said Catriona Donagh, an Australian artist whose work appeared in “Mobile Photo Paris.” “We thought it would be something different, a new direction for mobile photography in France.”

A new direction indeed. In a city that spawned some of the greatest photographers in the world, mobile artists like Ms. Bénichou and Ms. Donagh are relatively unknown. The photographers form an eclectic group - mostly French, with a few from the United States, Britain and Australia. Only two are professionals; the others are practicing lawyers, editors, scientists and architects.

What's more, not all of the artwork in the exhibition are simple photographs. Many are “photo creations,” amalgams of photography and digital arts, or photographs captured on a smartphone and edited using those whimsical mobile accessories called apps.

For many mobile photographers, said Ms. Donagh, 52, ta king a picture is just the beginning (below). Afterward, there are hundreds of apps available with which to process and manipulate images. Most cost less than $1 - they do everything from sharpening images, adjusting contrast, adding filters to stitching them together into panoramas. Cellphone cameras may owe their popularity to ease and convenience, but it is the apps that accompany them that have unleashed a flood of innovation and creativity.

Elena Shmagrinskaya From the series “Home ?…”

Nettie Edwards, a 53-year old British artist, is a prime example. The daughter of one of England's first blind photographers, Ms. Edwards grew up in her father's darkroom. She pursued a career in theater design and later dabbled in photograp hy and videography. Three years ago, Ms. Edwards (Slide 9) bought an iPhone.

“I got home and discovered the app store,” she said. “A lot of the work that I do is about memory and loss and sadness. I'm trying to squeeze as much emotion out of this little gadget as I can. With the apps I could start to take the kind of photographs that I could see inside my head.”

Ms. Bénichou uses upward of 100 apps to edit the images she takes with her iPhone (Slides 1, 6 and 11). “It's like a new world every time you open an app,” she said. “It widens your imagination and creativity to have these tools available.”

Of course there are limits to what a cellphone camera can do. But advocates of the mobile movement say the random nature of the pictures they produce using a camera with minimal controls is the perfect antidote to the minute refinements made possible by digital photography. “Because you know that the camera is not capable of sophisticated thing s,” Ms. Donagh said, “you can liberate yourself on an artistic level. It's a challenge to produce something good with a very simple tool.”

Then there is the social component of mobile photography, which can be as powerful as the medium itself. Rather than be tethered to a darkroom or a computer, mobile photographers can shoot, edit and upload images all while walking to work or perhaps during a lunch break. As a result, they are using photo-sharing sites like Instagram and Flickr - or social networking sites like Facebook - as never before, sending images around the world and receiving reactions at warp speed.

Catriona Donagh From the series “L'Anonymat dans la géométrie d'une ville.”

Granted, the mobile photo netwo rk has its critics. Some worry that an understanding of basic photographic principles like aperture or shutter speed is being lost among the new crop of photographers. Others think easy access to cheap photo technologies is resulting in a proliferation of amateur snapshots that destroys the integrity of professional work.

“It's obviously a new form of art and the French are very shy about it,” Ms. Bénichou said. “People don't like the fact that the images are edited because they say it's not reality.”

But photographers have always manipulated their pictures, first in darkrooms and then in Photoshop. Among the first to do so were the pictorialists, said Ms. Bénichou, 49. Responding to criticisms of the day - that photographs reproduced reality rather than interpreted it, as art did - photographers at the turn of the 20th century used lenses and printing processes to distort their images and make them look more like paintings.

Then there is the issu e of democratization.

“Everyone can use a phone,” Ms. Bénichou said. “It's not a real camera. Immediately it raises the question of who is an artist.”

But professional photographers have been grumbling about amateurs rendering their work obsolete since 1888, when George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera with the slogan, “You press the button, we do the rest.”

“Because we're pushing photography to the limit more and more,” Ms. Bénichou said, “the old criticisms are coming back.”

Stéphane Mahé From the series “Un dimanche sur terre.”

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