Instagram goes analog in new fine art photo book

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Out of the Phone features 100 of the best photographs made with mobile phones in 2014. Cover photo by Jason Flett
New book Out of the Phone features 100 of the best photographs made with mobile phones in 2014. Photo: Jason Flett

If you can suffer through the selfies, food shots and pet pictures, you can catch a glimpses of the revolutionary art form that is mobile phone photography. Book publisher Pierre Le Govic has positioned himself to be the first important curator of the fleeting beauty on Instagram.

Le Govic, who established a publishing house in France for mobile photography in 2013, has issued Out of the Phone: The Mobile Photo Book 2014 Edition, featuring one picture each from 100 photographers from 25 countries

He started the blog Emotional Daily in 2012 to feature and support what he felt was the best of mobile photography. Then after the start of his publishing house, Out of the Phone, he produced Downtown, the mobile photography of San Francisco’s Richard Koci Hernandez.

Instagram is just 4 years old and its users crank out 70 million photos each day. Many artists, especially photographers, have embraced Instagram and the mobile phone as a new tool. Some use it strictly to increase visibility of their brand, but others have enthusiastically embraced it for releasing deeply tamped-down creativity.

For the 2014 edition, Le Govic used Instagram in September to publicize the project with the hashtag #10days100photographs and quickly produced the book in time for the holidays.

The book features 100 photographers from 25 countries. Photo courtesy of Out of the Phone
The book features 100 photographers from 25 countries. Photo courtesy Out of the Phone

While the collection includes work from several professionals known to Le Govic, such as Hernandez, Eric Mencher, Benjamin Lowy, Q Sakamaki and Ako Salemi, amateurs and beginners were also discovered through the hashtag.

“We only selected photographers with a consistent body of work as we wanted to feature photographers who have a real photographic approach,” Le Govic explained in a written statement. “It’s easy to take one good picture whereas it’s much more difficult to have a real photographic story to tell.”

One story that seems universal is how many of the photographers selected for the book describe being liberated from editor’s expectations and from bulky equipment by their phone’s camera. For many, using a smartphone has restored the pure joy that first lured them to photography.

Le Govic said lots of photographers once kept their work hidden from public viewing until they felt ready to reveal it. But the instant-sharing aspect of mobile photography is helping photographers to let go.

“In a strange way, mobile photography has helped return me to my roots, to rediscover the great joy of wandering the streets with a small and unobstrusive camera, waiting to seize moments large and small, finding meaning in the commonplace,” Mencher, a former Philadelphia Inquirer photographer, wrote for the book. “I feel visually liberated.”

Le Govic joined his family printing business in 1993 and managed it from 1998 until 2007 when it was sold. He co-founded a photoengraving studio in 2003 and has worked with several famous photographers in photo publishing. He’s currently planning other books, all collections of mobile photography.

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