Giles,

Thank you so much for the article. And I am more than happy to weigh in on your question “Should we separate out photos taken with an iPhone, just because they were taken with an iPhone? ”

My answer is an unequivocal “Yes.”

The iPhone IS a simple, limited, almost awful camera, which is part of its great allure for me personally.

I love the apps. Almost every iPhontographer I like has a “toolkit” of apps he or she favors. Marty Yawnick, who had three pictures in the show, and flew out from Dallas for the opening, calls it his “camera bag.”

So the images we see from the iPhone are not manipulated as those in advertisements, or fashion magazines, or playboy, to SELL something, but (and this is my opinion only) rather to bring out the greater truth of the image for the artist – and this is where, after the initial shot is taken, the artist’s personality emerges. And, naturally, the subject of the photo tells us volumes about the artist as well.

Still, the artist must get the original shot. This is the photographic moment. Then something else begins to happen.

A couple people who do a lot of creative manipulation and layering, using multiple apps, on the site are Jon Betts and Maia Panos, both of whom are in a league of their own as far as i am concerned … There are others but I know a lot about each of their methods, so they come immediately to mind. They have their own categories, so they are easy to find. But look through the whole site and see the great work that is coming in from all over the world.

It is a mistake, though an easy one to make, to compare iPhontography solely to traditional photography.

It is a new medium, which simply begins with the photographic process.

I’m not quite sure how everything fits together, but i believe it is also a new form of printmaking (now that Rae and I have demonstrated how lovely the prints look with the gallery show for all to see – and the book we are producing will spread the message much further.

True, these are images taken in the photographic moment, and sometimes we take forty shots in that moment (like most photographers) and then spend a long time massaging the image and combining or layering it with others which have also been filtered, sharpened, tinted, saturated, desaturated, vignetted, or whatever … which would be akin to pushing the film and dodging and burning prints in the darkroom in old time analog photography.

Not only is iPhontography (my term) a new medium, I believe it has just emerged from its infancy and we are now seeing some great art by great artists as they push the boundaries of the technology.

Hope I made some sense. And I am sure others will have other ideas. :)

Thanks again.