I feel it’s important to reflect that camera phones are an important image making tool for me. It stems from a reading group I ran with my 2nd year undergraduate photography tutor group in 2016, a class of about 13 students. I asked how many of them took photographs as a hobby for themselves outside of uni projects, and they all said no, shaking their heads, not a single student put up their hand. I found that rather sad, and as an educator, upsetting.
Later in the conversation (prompted by something student Natalie Haywood said) I asked how many took photos on their phones and put them on social media. They all put up their hands straight away. I was shocked how they separated what they considered to be ‘real’ photography, from photographs they take in their daily lives.
With the portfolios below, as a Photographer (with a capital ‘P’) I regret that the image quality is lower than I would like, but as a Visual Anthropologist I show them with no apology.