Treasure Chest

WHAT’S THE REAL ATTRACTION—THE PHONE’S CAMERA OR THE CREATIVITY OF ITS APPS?

- Barry Tanenbaum

HAROLD DAVIS CAME TO IPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY about seven years ago by the usual route: “I’d been hearing about it,” he says, “and I needed a phone. I got the phone, and then it was, Okay, now let’s see what the camera can do.” What’s happened after that may or may not be considered usual.

He realized that what the camera could do was okay—“it was a question of the resolution getting to a reasonable point”— but it was what the apps could do that made him a believer.

He puts it this way: “I’d been doing a lot of traveling, and I’d sit in restaurants by myself, in train stations, at bus stops, and I was never bored—I had a darkroom in my pocket.”