The Photographer Vanishes - An examination of the influence of the smartphone camera on the aesthetics of photography

This paper is a discussion of the possible subtle influence of smartphone camera technology on the aesthetics of photography. Using a paper in IEEE by the computer engineers Wenyuan Yin, Tao Mei, Chang Wen Chen, and Shipeng Li on the development of an app for smartphones, designed to aid the everyman photographer by helping him or her photograph more perfectly, in the initial run, eight different landmarks around the world.After a definition of key concepts as they are used in this paper, the paper by Yin et al. is analyzed solely with the purpose to find out what they mean by ”better” pictures – what their concept of aesthetics is.Several older papers with a similar intention but varying methods are discussed to provide an idea of a field where aesthetics are central, but not clearly defined. It is shown that the concept of aesthetics in this field is based almost entirely on the points given to pictures by users of photo databases, thus actually equating aesthetic value with mass-appeal.It is argued that this reliance on what is termed “mass aesthetics” seems to reduce the photographer to an anonymous figure without agency. Further it is argued, on the basis of the concepts of Walter Benjamin that the procedure designed by Yin et al. would render all aesthetic practices within the art of photography ritualistic.The paper concludes that it is useful in this discussion to distinguish between four separate types of aesthetics in the field of computational aesthetics: modern aesthetics, defined by the agency of the artist, mass aesthetics, defined by being authorless, the simplistic aesthetics, as utilized by the field which has been examined and finally, based on Yin et al., ritualized aesthetics.Ritualized aesthetics are defined by their dependence on repetition, therefore they become akin to religious ceremony, or, more simply a chant or hymn.