THE POST-PHOTOGRAPHIC EYE — Smart phone, AI, and the Philosophical Transformation of Seeing

Introduction: When the Camera Became Small Enough to Change Us

Photography did not transform the world merely by arriving. It transformed the world each time it shrunk—each time the act of image-making became more portable, more instantaneous, more embedded in human behavior. The Kodak Brownie taught everyday people that life could be recorded. The Leica taught photographers that life could be caught as it moved. Digital cameras taught us that light could be measured numerically, infinitely.

The smartphone taught us something different:
that seeing is no longer separate from living.

This thesis examines the smartphone camera as the most culturally potent photographic apparatus in human history, focusing on how artificial intelligence—first quietly, then explicitly—reshaped what a photograph is and what it is becoming. Drawing on the philosophical frameworks of John Berger, Susan Sontag, and Vilém Flusser, I argue that smartphone photography constitutes a new post-photographic condition, one in which:

• cameras no longer represent reality but interpret it,
• photographers no longer operate machines but collaborate with them,
• and images no longer document the past but predict the future.

My voice in this document shifts between academic analysis and the grounded, observational tone of a working photographer—the Sonny Photos voice that tries to keep theory tethered to a real street corner, a waiting moment, a small piece of light falling across a human face.

This is not just the story of the smartphone.
This is the story of how seeing itself changed.

1 — What Came Before: Pre-AI Seeing and the Analog Consciousness

Before smartphones, before AI, before computational photography quietly rewrote the rules of optics, the camera functioned according to a simple philosophical model:

Light enters a box and leaves an imprint.
The photographer chooses where to stand.
The apparatus does little else.

Berger and the Politics of the Visible

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972) argued that every photograph is a way of interpreting the world. But Berger’s photographer is still a human strategist—someone who observes, selects, frames, and records.

In the pre-AI era:

• photographs were anchored in a direct encounter,
• meaning emerged from presence and perspective,
• and the apparatus had limited agency.

In my own practice, shooting on film or early digital cameras, this era feels like walking across a quiet room to open a window. There is intention, bodily effort, and a sense of friction. The camera waits for me. It needs me.

This will not always be the case.

Sontag and the Anxiety of Collecting the World

Susan Sontag’s On Photography (1977) frames photography as an act of appropriation—“to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.” Pre-AI photography strengthened this dynamic: photographs were trophies of experience, proofs of presence.

The smartphone dissolves this framework in two ways:

1. It makes photographs too abundant to function as trophies.
2. AI introduces forms of imagery no longer tied exclusively to real subjects.

But before these shifts, Sontag’s logic governed how we understood the moral stakes of photography.

Flusser and the Apparatus of Pre-Programmed Possibilities

Vilém Flusser’s Towards a Philosophy of Photography (1983) anticipates the current era more clearly than any other theorist. He argued that photographers do not create freely—they operate within a “program” of pre-set possibilities encoded in the camera’s design.

In the pre-AI era, that program was optical and mechanical. In the smartphone era, the program becomes algorithmic, predictive, and fluid.

What was once a tool is now a collaborator.

2 — The Rise of the Smartphone: When the Camera Became a Companion (2000–2015)

The First Camera Phones (1999–2002)

The Kyocera VP-210 (1999) and Sharp J-SH04 (2000) introduced the idea of embedding imaging into communication technology. Though primitive, these devices reoriented photography’s social purpose. Taking a photo was no longer necessarily an artistic or documentary act—it became a communicative one.

Berger wrote that a photograph is “a quotation.” The camera phone made quotations immediate, casual, and conversational.

The iPhone (2007) and the Operating System of Seeing

With the release of the iPhone in 2007, photography entered a new phase—not because of sensor quality, but because image-making became integrated with:

• messaging
• online sharing
• cloud storage
• real-time editing
• app ecosystems

The iPhone transformed photography into gesture—fluid, frictionless, ubiquitous.

As a photographer, it felt like the camera suddenly sat in my pocket saying, “Whenever you’re ready, I’m ready.” There was no ritual, no zipper on a camera bag, no lens cap to remove. The decisive moment moved closer.

Instagram (2010) and the Socialization of the Image

Instagram’s launch in October 2010 shifted photography from memory to performance.

Sontag’s argument that people “experience reality as a photographable moment” became a daily truth. But Instagram amplified something she could not have predicted: photography as an identity feedback loop, where images circulate algorithmically, shaping not only what we show but what we look for.

The Smartphone as a Learning Device

The smartphone democratized visual literacy. Billions learned composition, exposure, and editing intuitively. Photography ceased to be a specialized craft. It became a basic cultural language.

To walk through a city in the smartphone era is to see people continually negotiating their relationship to light, gesture, and self-image. Photography became a verb of modern life.

3 — Computational Photography: The Algorithm Becomes the Eye (2015–2020)

The Shift from Optics to Computation

Computational photography emerged from the smartphone’s physical limitations—tiny sensors, tiny lenses. Engineers compensated with:

• multi-frame fusion
• machine learning segmentation
• AI-based noise reduction
• computational depth of field
• HDR+ merging
• semantic color correction

The camera no longer simply recorded reality; it interpreted it.

Flusser’s “apparatus” becomes prophetic here. He foresaw a future in which machines would not merely capture images but generate visual possibilities, nudging photographers toward outcomes encoded in their design.

Portrait Mode (2016)

The introduction of Portrait Mode on the iPhone 7 Plus used dual-lens parallax mapping to simulate shallow depth of field. It marked a philosophical rupture:

Depth became software.
Blur became a choice in a menu.
Optical laws became adjustable parameters.

The smartphone camera could now create images that never existed optically. This was the beginning of post-photographic seeing.

Night Mode (2018–2020)

Night Mode uses multi-second computational stacking to simulate long exposure without requiring a tripod. It collapses the boundaries between seeing and synthesizing.

Standing on a Charleston street at dusk with Night Mode engaged, the phone reveals detail invisible to the human eye. Light appears where there was darkness. The apparatus expands our sensory field.

We begin to rely on the machine to tell us what the world looks like.

4 — Pre-AI vs. Post-AI Photography: The Divide We Rarely Name

Pre-AI Photography

• rooted in optics and chemistry
• single exposure
• apparatus acts predictably
• photographer is primary agent
• image = record of a moment

Post-AI Photography

• rooted in computation
• multi-frame synthesis
• apparatus interprets intent
• photographer and AI share agency
• image = reconstruction, prediction, or fabrication

This shift is not merely technical; it is ontological.

What is a photograph when it no longer guarantees a moment ever existed?

Berger’s insistence that photographs contain a kind of honesty becomes unstable. Sontag’s fear that images would saturate and trivialize experience becomes predictive. Flusser’s warning that the apparatus would begin to “play against the photographer” becomes literal when AI begins generating images with no human referent.

5 — The Photographers Who Used the Smartphone to Change the Medium

Kathy Ryan — Office Romance

Her iPhone photographs of everyday office light are a perfect example of smartphone seeing:
intimate, quiet, observational
—precisely the kind of photography that large cameras rarely invite.

Ben Lowy — Conflict Photography

Lowy used smartphones in Libya and Afghanistan because:

• they were inconspicuous
• they transmitted images instantly
• they presented a civilian perspective

His work challenges the assumption that “serious cameras” produce serious images.

Richard Koci Hernandez — Mobile Street Photography

His minimalist monochrome iPhone images distill the smartphone’s strength:
stealth, spontaneity, and the deep depth of field that renders gestures in space.

Chase Jarvis — Philosophy of Ubiquity

Jarvis’s phrase “The best camera is the one that’s with you” (2009) became the thesis of the mobile era.

Together, these practitioners demonstrate that the smartphone is not a degraded camera—it is a different camera with its own aesthetic territory.

Chapter 6 — Post-AI Photography: When the Camera Learns to See Without Us (2020–Present)

Beginning around 2020, AI moved from background processing to explicit creative collaboration.

Semantic Understanding

Smartphones now identify:

• skies
• faces
• pets
• flowers
• text
• movement

And adjust exposure, depth, and color based on semantic meaning.

Predictive Imaging

Computational shutter systems capture multiple frames before the shutter is pressed.
The photograph precedes the act.

Neural Image Rendering

Techniques such as:

• GAN-based upscaling
• AI super resolution
• Deep Fusion
• Semantic HDR reconstruction

replace pixel information with predicted detail.

The apparatus now imagines part of the world.

What This Means Philosophically

Flusser’s prediction becomes fulfilled:
“The camera begins to photograph independently of the photographer.”

We co-author images with systems we do not fully understand.

Sontag’s worries about the loss of reality intensify in the AI age.
Berger’s trust in photography as a human way of seeing is complicated by machine learning’s intervention in the visual field.

And yet—

From the Sonny Photos perspective, walking through Charleston with a smartphone is still a human act of looking. We aim the camera where our intuition takes us. We search for the good light. We wait for the gesture. The machine may assist, but the seeing is still ours.

For now.

7 — The Future of Smartphone Photography: A Speculative Forecast (2025–2035)

1. Neural Optics

Future smartphones will integrate:

• event-based sensors
• depth lidar arrays
• neural radiance fields (NeRFs)
• continuous 3D mapping of environments

This will enable photographs that are not flat but volumetric.

You will be able to “walk through” a photograph.

2. Synthetic Aperture Imaging

Multiple lenses and computational alignment will simulate lenses impossible in physical reality—
f/0.3 depth of field, infinite focus planes, variable perspective.

3. Real-Time AI Character Editing

Subjects will be cleaned, sharpened, relit, or subtly beautified automatically.

The ethical line between correction and manipulation will blur.

4. Predictive Composition Assistance

Smartphones will suggest:

• framing adjustments
• timing cues
• “better moments”
• improved angles

The camera becomes a coach—
and perhaps a co-director.

5. Synthetic Memory Generation

AI may reconstruct moments you almost captured.
Future cameras will offer:
“Would you like me to rebuild the moment without the crowd?”
“Would you like me to relight the scene?”
“Would you like the photo you meant to take?”

This is the post-photographic horizon.

6. Image Integrity Protocols

To counter manipulation, future phones will embed cryptographic authenticity certificates, marking which pixels were captured vs. generated.

Reality itself will require metadata.

8 — Conclusion: The Fate of Seeing

Photography began as an act of witnessing.
The smartphone turned it into an act of communicating.
AI is turning it into an act of co-creation—sometimes collaboration, sometimes negotiation.

Where does this leave the photographer?

In the midst of these transformations, the core remains:

Photography is still the act of choosing where to look.

Berger gave us the foundation: all images are ways of seeing.
Sontag showed us the dangers and seductions of image abundance.
Flusser revealed that the apparatus always shapes human intention.

The smartphone camera—especially in the AI age—amplifies all three.

And yet, as I walk with my small camera, slowing down on a Charleston street, watching light spill across old buildings, noticing the way shadows soften or harden depending on the time of day, I still feel that ancient tug of curiosity:

What will the world reveal if I stand here a moment longer?

The machine may help me.
It may anticipate my choices.
It may even finish my images for me.

But the seeing is still mine.

For now, that is enough.
And perhaps that is what will always separate the photographer from the apparatus:
the human desire to look carefully, slowly, intimately—
even as the small camera grows smarter than we ever imagined.

Presented by: Sonny Green at Sonny.Photos
For more tips and upcoming workshops, visit:
https://sonny.photos
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