Friday, July 22, 2011

Real photographer or phoney?

You may have seen copies of this poster around town. I've been thinking about it for days, and photographed it this morning with my iphone, driving down Toorak Road. The poster is a direct provocation to those of us who now use our smart phones, with their five-megapixel cameras, to record our daily lives. "Get a real camera!", it screams. Moreover, with its challenge to our virility (those limp two minute noodles...) and integrity (are you "real" or "phoney"?), it suggests a picture of the hard-nosed photographer that many of us assumed had passed away. I know it's an ad (for Olympus) and chock-full of irony, but it got me thinking: is the challenge posed by the smart phone to the veracity and identity of the photographer real, or simply a cute line thought up by clever marketers?



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