Ben Lowy

iLibya: Uprising by iPhone is a series created by Ben Lowy in tandem with the Arab Spring movement across the Middle East, which itself began through social media. Lowy writes: “My iPhone transmitted images from the field like many of the Libyan revolutionaries around me. Mobile phone cameras are innocuous and enable a far greater intimacy with a subject. Embracing this new paradigm of journalism–no middleman, no publisher–I posted images from Libya and gained scores of followers–Libyans, Americans, Europeans–who bypassed traditional news sources. As a photojournalist, my responsibility includes not just communicating content but also creating an aesthetic, a visual narrative that captures my audience’s attention. The public today is more visually sophisticated than ever before. The overwhelming amount of information on the internet tends to weaken the impact of content. Important stories get lost in the fray. So as a photographer, I need an image that will engage the viewer, make audiences question what they are seeing, and allow them to step closer to the image and, thus, the content.”