1.3: Images From My Phone

1.3: Images from My Phone

On an out-of-town trip in 2007,Joel Greyfound himself in a small St. Lucie, Florida museum, filled with bizarre and eminently photographable objects. Feeling, as he had with the images that became 2003'sPictures I Had to Take, compelled to capture these provocative tableaux, but without his trusty Nikon Nikkormat by his side, Grey did the next-best thing he could-he reached for his cell phone.Grey had never had any use for the camera function of his Nokia 133 before, and was skeptical about the capabilities of its tiny 1.3-megapixel lens. But to his surprise, the same familiar perspective he'd always had when taking photographs was still there; even without a viewfinder, he could make the kinds of pictures he had always loved to make. The limitations of the format-the inability to control the aperture stop, focus, or any of the other variables of traditional photography besides framing-proved a thrilling new challenge, which Grey likens to "collaborating with a power larger than yourself." Grey spent the next eight months shooting with his phone, and the result is1.3: Images from My Phone, a collection of slices cut from diverse visual worlds: street art and still life, advertising and architecture, shadows and reflections, natural beauty and urban grit.Review"Whenever I see something I don't quite understand--a shape, a color, an odd juxtaposition of the real and the abstract--nine times out of ten, it's my reason for taking a photograph. For me, taking pictures is like asking questions." --Joel GreyAbout the AuthorIn a theatre career that was launched in the early 1950s, Joel Grey's credits include Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (Roundabout), Anything Goes, Wicked, Chicago, George M! (Tony Award nom.), and Cabaret (Tony Award). He was Ned Weeks in the Public Theatre's original off-Broadway production of Larry Kramer's seminal play, The Normal Heart, in 1986, and co-directed the Tony Award-winning Broadway premiere in 2011. Film credits include Cabaret (Academy Award), Buffalo Bill and the Indians, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Dancer In the Dark, The Seven Percent Solution, and many more. Joel is also an internationally exhibited photographer with four published books, Pictures I Had to Take (2003), Looking Hard at Unexamined Things (2006), 1.3: Images From My Phone (2009), and The Billboard Papers (2013). His work is part of the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum of American Art. His memoir, Master of Ceremonies, was released in 2016 (Flatiron Press).