Picture this: the impact of mobile camera phones on personal photographic practices

The convergence of the camera and mobile phone has proved to be highly popular. This should come as no surprise to anyone interested in both the history of mobility and the history of photography.1 As media archaeologist Errki Huhtamo has asserted, the first mobile medium proper was arguably amateur or personal photography (Huhtamo, 2004). Camera phones are not, however, just another kind of camera. Located as they are in a device that is not only connected to the telecommunications grid but that is usually carried with us wherever we go, camera phones are both extending existing personal imaging practices and allowing for the evolution of new kinds of imaging practices. Given the centrality of personal photography to processes of identity formation and memorialization, changes to the ways in which we capture, store, and disseminate personal photographs through the use of devices like camera phones will have important repercussions for how we understand who we are and how we remember the past. The aim of this paper is to look at the current social uses of personal photography and to consider the impact that camera phones will have on these uses. I will examine the ways in which camera phones are enabling new modes of personal photography, which will extend the role that photographs play in our lives. [Introduction]