klathigra's blog

• Berger, J. (1972) Ways of seeing. London: Penguin.
• Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin. Fontcuberta, J. (2014) Pandora’s camera: photogr@phy after photography. London: MACK.
• Smith, W.A. (1976) The meaning of conscientização: the goal of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. Amherst, MA: Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts.
• BJP Staff (2025) ‘How mobile photography is reshaping cultural storytelling worldwide’, British Journal of Photography. Available at: https://www.1854.photography/2025/12/how-mobile-photography-is-reshaping-cultural-storytelling-worldwide/
• Marchese, M. (2023) ‘The new age of Homo Photographicus’, Made in Mind Magazine. Available at: https://www.madeinmindmagazine.com/the-new-age-of-homo-photographicus/
• Suominen, A (2003 ) Writing with Photographs, Re -Constructing Self : An Arts Based Autoethnographic Inquiry.MA thesis. The Ohio State University
• Spence, J. (1988) Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography. Real Comet Press / Camden Press, London/Seattle. 
• Joan Fontcuberta (n.d.) Homo (post) Photographicus [Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_PRSTdSbzc 
• Winogrand, G. & Papageorge, T. (1977) Public Relations. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
• Kalpesh Lathigra  Lost in the Wilderness. Financial Times. Available at: https://www.ft.com
• Chayka, K. (2024) How I Fell Back in Love with iPhone Photography. The New Yorker, 16 October 2024. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-i-fell-back-in-love-with-iphone-photography
• Isabel Brooks (2025) Now that phones alter our photos without us knowing, how do we know what’s real? The Guardian, 23 December 2025. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/23/smartphones-photos-filters-pictures-software

1. Mixed qualitative approach was chosen to foreground lived experience, visual experimentation, and reflection rather than measurable technical outcomes.
2. The use of smartphones significantly supported accessibility and inclusivity within the research process.
3. Post-workshop feedback forms provided valuable reflective data, allowing participants to articulate their learning in their own words.
4. Open-ended questions supported comparison across responses and revealed a range of engagement, from confident conceptual synthesis to tentative positions.
5. Brevity of the form constrained the depth of reflection, particularly for students who may require more time, dialogue, or verbal exchange to process complex ideas.
6. Method privileged students who are already comfortable with written academic reflection
7. This potentially limiting access for others.

The short duration of the remote workshop also shaped the findings. While effective as an intervention, it did not allow sufficient time for participants to revisit, revise, or contextualise and have a group dialogue about the project and their images. This hindered the development of sustained critical positions, particularly around ethics and social justice, which require iterative discussion and reflection. At the same time, the compressed format made visible how quickly dominant assumptions about technology, professionalism, and value can surface when challenged, providing useful diagnostic insight into student thinking.

The participants were sent a Microsoft Questionnaire with a series of questions after the remote workshop to reflect on the exercise of using the Smartphone Zoom. Here are a couple of the results . The results have been place into One Drive under UK GDPR ARP Participant Response

My research methods combined a short, practice based workshop, participant image-making, and post-workshop written feedback

Four students from the BA Photography Pathways took part in the remote workshop. Two were 2nd year and two were 3rd year students. The pathways were BA Photography/ BA Creative Industry / BA Photojournalism

Initially the workshop was to be undertaken at the London College of Communication as a group exercise. I had given the students instructions via a information form and met with them in person to discuss the ARP. However it became apparent that they were under personal pressure and commitments in their own pathways and external commitments for paid work, travelling home to their own countries and family that an in person workshop was impossible. However they were willing to make it a remote workshop, to make the images in their own time and send to me via email and direct messaging apps. Whilst the workshop took place under these constraints, a dialogue between the participants didnot and evident that this will impact on the ARP and its results.

These are the results of the four participants.

Participant 1

Participant 2

Participant 3

Participant 4

Education treats learners as co-investigators of reality rather than empty vessels to be filled. The setting of a structured “brief” formulated for an outcome based on industry expectations, stereotypes, fads and in the context of “content driven ” platforms produces a homogenous stream. The success of a photographer for example based on a printing technique, a particular camera model , pseudo – documentary etc amplifies this. Is it the result of an over saturated market of supply and demand and economic reality alongside preparation of students for the industry?

Instead of teaching how to take better photos maybe we can ask students

Why does this image exist ?

Who does it serve ?

What does it exclude?

How does the phone shape what can be seen?

Photography then becomes a method of questioning and a way of reading the world visually.

Critical visual consciousness involves recognising, algorithmic bias, colonial aesthetics, beauty norms that are embedded in software and the Platform economies of attention

Students move from the statement of “I like this image” to “Why do I like this image, and who taught me to?”

This is “conscientização” through images involving an understanding the deep, systemic, and political factors that shape daily life rather than just acknowledging surface issues

“A development of a code particularly applicable to nonformal educational programs devised to aid in establishing objectives, training methodologies, evaluating, and determining the relationship between changes in thought and changes in action. “

Smith, W.A. (1976) The meaning of conscientização: the goal of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. Amherst, MA: Center for International Education, University of Massachusetts.

We can apply this to photography, the subjects are not “captured”, communities are collaborators, images are negotiated, not extracted.

Smartphone photography, when used critically, allows, immediate feedback, a collective authorship and consent as a process.

Smartphone photography becomes a pedagogy when it names oppression rather than beautifying it replacing instruction with dialogue. Students can treat images as questions not answers, valuing process over the end product committing to a practice and not a performative platform based model.

Joan Fontcuberta – Post Photography

The democratisation of photography where everyone becomes a photographer but photography loses privilege. The Smartphone effect with its magic filters, Ai, computations and the universal language we all speak with images. Photography has become a reflex, the meal go to, a social gesture to a professional tool. The phone camera functions less as an artistic tool and more as a memory prosthetic, a social proof device , a tool of presence , Look at Me , I was here !

To photograph is no longer to represent, but to participate, its a form of Citizenship of the World.

Reading The Post-Photography Era through the prism of smartphone photography reveals that Fontcuberta was not theorising a future he was actually diagnosing a present that would soon become a universal norm.

Smartphone photography shows that , Images no longer represent reality but that they organise attention, memory, and social life. Photography has shifted from a medium to an environment

The key post photographic skill is no longer how to take photographs, but how to think with and against images.

We can think it as a radical extension of Fontcuberta’s idea that not producing images can also be a post photographic act in itself.

In terms of the workshop and future Joan Fontcuberta’s concept of post photography by using smartphone images as sites of intervention, where authorship, truth, excess, and circulation are collectively interrogated and reconfigured through practice.

Image overload is not a problem , it is the condition. Students can refuse ” the idea of the perfect shot “, instead work with screenshots, misfires, duplicates, recrops. They can analyse their camera rolls. The Smartphone zoom can treat ” failed images” into a diagnostic tool and also a finished result. We can term it an ” Camera Roll Autopsy “, students can look at for example 50 of their last images and identify patterns, repetitions and absences.

They can ask themselves What does this archive say about my habits of seeing? Turning this avalanche of images into critical material.

Fontcuberta, J. (2014) ‘The post-photography era’, in Pandora’s Camera: Photography after Photography. London: Mack.

Post-photography dismantles style and originality.

Aesthetics without style.

The End of a Practitioner’s Authorship

The Smartphone reality is that presets flatten visual difference , trends override personal vision and images converge toward platform norms. The “look” is no longer personal, it is platform native. The dominant aesthetic today is recognisability, not originality.

This echoes Fontcuberta’s claim that photography becomes vernacular, anonymous, and unstable.

Berger argues that mechanical reproduction detaches images from their original context, authority, and ritual meaning. Smartphone photography radicalises this idea. From reproduction to instant circulation: Images are no longer reproduced after being made; they are produced for circulation. A photograph today is incomplete until it is shared, scrolled, liked, archived, forgotten. The meaning is shaped less by the photographer’s intention than by platform context whether thats the Instagram feed, WhatsApp group, cloud storage, algorithmic ranking

Berger’s claim that seeing comes before words. Smartphones intensifies this pre-verbal dominance.We now see before thinking, caption before reflecting, post before remembering.The use of Filters, Presets, and AI enhancements pre-shape perception before conscious choice. Our vision becomes automated: the phone decides exposure, focus, beauty, sharpness.

This shifts Berger’s idea , Seeing is no longer merely culturally conditioned. Seeing is technologically pre-scripted.The smartphone does not just show the world; it teaches us How the world should look!

Berger insists that images reflect power relations. Smartphone photography makes this explicit:Every photo is taken with an imagined audience in mind.The question is no longer “What am I seeing?” but “How will this be received?”. This I feel effects students , an emphasis on the latter is – Is this an expectation of what the Educator will give a positive response to ” the LIKE” if we were using an Instagram analogy. Is this what the Industry expects and recognises and how does this perform in the socio economic spheres of influence.

The technology of the front-facing camera turns seeing into self-surveillance. A Performative seeing and an anticipation of the future post already in mind. Berger’s insight that “the way we see things is affected by what we know or believe” becomes:

The way we see things is affected by how we expect them to circulate.

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of seeing. London: Penguin.