Hipstamatic on the Front Line in Afghanistan
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 7:05PM | Glyn Evans 
Above: LCpl. Kevin Daly © Balazs Gardi"Foreign Policy" magazine is currently running a 5 part series of photos on their website, showing the lives of of U.S. Marines in Helmand province in 2010 and 2011, and all shot on iPhones using Hipstamatic.
This experiment in photojournalism was conducted by Teru Kuwayama and Balazs Gardi, who embedded themselves with Marine Battalion 1/8 in Helmand for five months starting in September 2010, and collaborating with three other photographers on a project called Basetrack.
The links to parts 1, 2 and 3, which have already been published, can be found below, with the link to the full list, (which will include the yet to be published parts 4 and 5) here.
Part 1: The War in Hipstamatic
Source: Foreign Policy magazine
The above photo: LCpl. Kevin Daly during a military operation near Doghaka village in Musa Qala district, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on November 7, 2010. Three squads and attachments with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, Bravo Company, 2nd Platoon participated in an ambush operation, aimed at penetrating the enemy line, forcing out insurgents and either engaging, killing or capturing them during the fight.
Hipstamatic in Hipstamatic
Reader Comments (4)
Perhaps things are explained more at Basetrack, but my work blocks it.
We all know the mantra -- the best camera is the one you have with you. Well, for a seasoned war photojournalist, you are going to have your cameras with you all the time. and they are like parts of your body, and using your tools is intuitive and simple. Usiing an iPhone is going to be a novelty rather than a real tool. Unless I am missing something. That's why I would have appreciated explanation from the photographers -- perhaps they are able to get shots they would not be able to otherwise with the iPhone?
Without that info, we are presented with a bunch of nice photographs that serve to advertise Hipstamatic, but again - what makes the photos good is the eye on the other side of the iPhone screen, not the Hipstamatic application.
first of all, i don' t think the pictures in the war series are particularly ' nice' , nor do i think that they ' serve to advertise hipstamatic'
damon winter has some interesting things to say about this subject
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/through-my-eye-not-hipstamatics/
for me, the war series are not about ' great photos' but about getting people to look at them
i think that by using the hipstamatic app, the photos get so much more impact that you are more or less forced to look closer and observe what' s going on
Thanks for the link to the article. This is what was missing from the coverage in FP - exactly what I was asking for.
Damon Winters says
"I could not have taken these photos using my S.L.R. and that perhaps is the most important point to be made about the camera phone in this story.
Using the phone is discreet and casual and unintimidating. The soldiers themselves often take pictures of one another with their phones and that was the hope of this essay: to have a set of photos that would almost look like those snapshots — but through a professional eye."
SO this answers my first question -- why use the iPhone?
and here he makes the same point I was trying to --
"People may have the impression that it is easy to make interesting images with a camera app like this, but it is not the case. At the heart of every solid image are the same fundamentals: composition, information, moment, emotion, connection. If people think that this is a magic tool, they are wrong. Of hundreds of images taken with the phone over those six days in Nahr-i-Sufi, only a handful were worth reproducing."