A couple of interesting experiments from Afghanistan caught my eye this morning documenting ventures in the photographic potential of the iPhone. 

First, this piece in The Guardian highlighting its use by Teru Kuwayama and Balazs Gardi.

(photo: Balazs Gardi and Teru Kuwayama speaking about Basetrack as part of Frontline’s strand at the 2011 Edinburgh Film Festival)

Part of the Basetrack endeavour, they say the iPhone "was the ideal, rugged piece of gear for southern Afghanistan" because it didn’t trap dust in the camera.

They were using the Hipstamatic app enabling users to take digital "Polaroids". 

Second, Michael Yon has been playing with Photosynth to document a military flight from Kabul to Kandahar.

In May, Yon said he was "studying up" on the iPhone app which claims to help photographers capture the world in 3D.

Video below of Balazs Gardi and Teru Kuwayama speaking at the Frontline Club in June 2009

Teru Kuwayama is embedded with the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, but he’s not there with a traditional media organisation. He and a team of photographers are using funds from a Knight Foundation grant as part of an experimental project covering 1/8 battalion’s deployment in Helmand province.

The team’s photographs and material relating to the deployment of the Marines are published on a WordPress-powered website and pushed through a Facebook group. 

On the group, friends, family and interested parties can comment on the photos. In an interview in the New York Times, Kuwayama says the project creates a: 

"pipeline between 1,000 Marines working in very austere, isolated conditions in southern Afghanistan and connect[s] them to their mothers, their fathers, their wives, their girlfriends, their husbands and their kids."

Because of difficulties transmitting photographs from some parts of Afghanistan, Kuwayama notes that the project has come to rely on the collaboration of those connected with the Marines who create and post their own content.

A "network of technologists, analysts, artists, and journalists" also contribute context about the war in Afghanistan. One of the aims of the project is to demonstrate and develop an open source web-based system called Basetrack which can be used to support reporting projects.

Asked whether this is the new journalism, Kuwayama replied "it’s a question of how you define journalism. You constantly hear these lamentations about the death of journalism. It doesn’t look like that to me. It looks like the birth of journalism".