What I See Now

Foreign Policy: “The War in Hipstamatic”

I’m really glad to see the Basetrack project (and the project’s Hipstamatic images) getting the attention they deserve, with a big feature at the website for Foreign Policy mag. (I interviewed Teru Kuwayama of Basetrack a while back.) Here’s part of what the mag’s got to say about these photos and Hipstamatic:

In this unique collection of photographs, largely taken on iPhones using an app called Hipstamatic that allows users to digitally manipulate “lenses,” “flashes,” and “film stock,” we found something exceptionally powerful: a record of the lives of U.S. Marines in Helmand province in 2010 and 2011 and of the Afghans they interacted with. It is by no means a comprehensive look at 10 years of war, but it is an evocative and profound slice of life — at the beginning of the end of the longest conflict in U.S. history.

Guardian: War photography. Isn’t there an app for that?

Nice piece on the Basetrack project, with photographers using Hipstamatic for war photos in Afghanistan.

Want to witness an truly innovative photojournalism and reporting initiative? Look no further than Basetrack, an experimental effort to report on the deployment of Marines in southern Afghanistan.

Visit Basetrack, and soon you’ll be viewing photos from photographers embedded with the First Battalion, Eighth Marines — yes, including many iPhone images — and hearing the stories of the Marines in their own voices. As the Basetrack website notes, “Basetrack’s forward team is supported by a network of technologists, analysts, artists, and journalists, working around the clock, from around the world, to connect over a thousand Marines and Corpsmen to their families, and to connect a broader public to the longest war in
 US history.”

I contacted one of the photographers behind Basetrack, Teru Kuwayama, and spoke to him about the project and his use of the iPhone camera to take photos for it. Here’s my interview with Teru. You can also view a slideshow of his images.

What made you decide to use the iPhone rather than a more traditional camera to capture images?
Maybe this is counterintuitive, but I wanted to demonstrate that it isn’t about technology, and that journalism (whatever that means anymore) doesn’t require “professional” gear. That said, I’ve been pretty amazed at how well the iPhone works — at least as a camera, I’ve never used it as a phone — but as cameras go, it might be the best piece of gear I’ve ever used.

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Hipstamatic debate stoked by New York Times war photos

The Hipstamatic app—either you love it or you hate it.

That seems to be the attitude among a lot of iPhoneographers. OK, maybe I’m exaggerating, but more and more I read anti-Hipstamatic rants (or tweets, or comments). What’s at the heart of the negative attitude toward Hipstamatic? The complaints often fall along these lines: Hipstamatic is cool, sure, but maybe too cool for its own good. It’s being used, the anti-Hipstamatic crowd seems to say, to generate quick, interesting-looking shots, but the processing is too extreme, the effects are often random, and too many of the images look alike.

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