Hipstamatic

“Stories have always been a large part of what Hipstamatic is about. We have an opportunity to let photographers do the stories they want to tell, so we will be giving out grants to these photographers, so they don’t have to find publishers to finance their work.” -Lucas Allen Buick, CEO of Hipstamatic publisher Synthetic, speaking to BJP

This is an exciting development. Hipstamatic, the photo filter app for iPhones (iTunes store link), has announced plans to offer grants in support of photojournalism. We’ve written about the use of Hipstamatic and other iPhone filter apps in photojournalism before. There’ve been a few significant bodies of photojournalistic work produced on the iPhone: Damon Winter’s A Grunt’s Life, Michael Christopher Brown’s work from Libya, parts of the Basetrack project, VII’s iSee exhibition, and Ben Lowy’s iLibya and work from Afghanistan, among others.

There are scant details on how these photojournalism grants will work, but as BJP reports, they could be monthly or quarterly and will involve an application and judging process. The grants will be managed through the Hipstamatic Foundation, an educational arm of the company designed to support photographic storytelling.

Ben Lowy, incidentally, has been posting iPhone images frequently on his tumblr, including recent work from Libya produced on a grant from the Magnum Foundation, and he’s involved at some level with the forthcoming Hipstamatic photojournalism grants. Lowy has entered a partnership of sorts with Hipstamatic to release a Ben Lowy Lens, which will be sold under the company’s GoodPak program to provide funding for the photojournalism grants.

Make sure to check out Tumblr’s storyboard blog for an interview with Lowy about his current iPhone work. They’ll be publishing his Libya photos daily over the next week.

By the way, if you click through our links to buy anything here, we get a small cut of the sale. It’s a way for us to keep the lights on here at dvafoto. Thanks to those of you who have clicked through us in the past!

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Benjamin Lowy guest appearance on 5 December 2011

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the interview.

Two of my favorite things (talented photojournalists and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) converge tonight when Benjamin Lowy appears as a guest on the show to talk about his latest book Iraq | Perspectives. The show will air on Comedy Central in the US on Dec. 5, 2011, and will likely be available online shortly thereafter. I’ve been a frequent watcher of the Daily Show since before Jon Stewart’s reign as host, and I can’t remember ever seeing another photographer as guest on the show. Lowy may be the first photojournalist to be featured in the show’s history.

The dearth of photographer guests on the Daily Show has always seemed strange to me, especially considering the number of war correspondents and documentary writers featured. Photographers have unparalleled on-the-ground experience of the wars and disasters chronicled, parodied and lambasted on the Daily Show. Other shows and outlets involve photographers a bit more; Ben Lowy recently, Ron Haviv, David Walter Banks, and others have been on CNN, and NPR’s Fresh Air has featured a number of photographers, including: Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, Roy DeCarava, James Balog, Joel Meyerowitz, Christopher Morris, and Horst Faas and Tim Page. But for some reason, the Daily Show rarely features photographers. Hopefully, Lowy’s appearance will be the start of a trend!

Check out Ben Lowy’s website while you’re at it and get a copy of his most recent book, Iraq | Perspectives.