War photography? Isn't there an app for that?
Two war photographers have used camera-phones and a simple app to record stunningly personal images of soldiers and locals in Afghanistan
A US marine returns from a firefight in Helmand province, Afghanistan, in November 2010 Photograph: Balazs Gardi/basetrack.org
Hipstamatic, as its name suggests, is an iPhone app more associated with dilettantish hipsters than hardened war photographers. But the application, which allows iPhone users to take digital "Polaroids", has become the camera of choice for two experienced photojournalists who spent much of the last year embedded with a battalion of the US marines in Afghanistan.
"We didn't go out there expecting to use Hipstamatic," says one of them, New York-based Teru Kuwayama, who first photographed Afghanistan – somewhat more conventionally – in 2004. "We had several different cameras, lenses and video recorders," he says. But the pair settled on Hipstamatic both because of its retro aesthetic and because the iPhone "was the ideal, rugged piece of gear for southern Afghanistan". With its simple touch-screen, it didn't trap dust like larger cameras do, which was particularly handy in a desert location.
"Before, I would have three cameras hanging off me," agrees his colleague, Hungarian Balazs Gardi, who was also on his second Afghan mission. "Using just the iPhone allowed me to move much more easily." The lack of a long lens also helped, Gardi says, because it forced him to get closer to his subjects. As a result, he and Kuwayama have created an unusually intimate series of portraits of both Afghan civilians, and US servicemen.
Full article here
"We didn't go out there expecting to use Hipstamatic," says one of them, New York-based Teru Kuwayama, who first photographed Afghanistan – somewhat more conventionally – in 2004. "We had several different cameras, lenses and video recorders," he says. But the pair settled on Hipstamatic both because of its retro aesthetic and because the iPhone "was the ideal, rugged piece of gear for southern Afghanistan". With its simple touch-screen, it didn't trap dust like larger cameras do, which was particularly handy in a desert location.
"Before, I would have three cameras hanging off me," agrees his colleague, Hungarian Balazs Gardi, who was also on his second Afghan mission. "Using just the iPhone allowed me to move much more easily." The lack of a long lens also helped, Gardi says, because it forced him to get closer to his subjects. As a result, he and Kuwayama have created an unusually intimate series of portraits of both Afghan civilians, and US servicemen.
Full article here
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