Untitled by Shawn Rocco

The NYTimes' photojournalism blog, Lens, posted an album of images this morning captured by professional photographer, Shawn Rocco, on his Motorola E815 camera phone. Several years back, he was given one of the cameras by the newsroom he works for at The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, which he soon discovered were simple tools for creating serendipitous images. He started the blog, Cellular Obscura, which has since solidified him in the ranks as a cell-phone-photo guru.

The blog writes,

"Serendipity is a very powerful thing," Mr. Rocco said in a telephone interview this week. "I'm not a voyeur, but I like catching people in their own little world, without interrupting them."

...

He discerns parallels between cellphone and Polaroid photography. "With Polaroid, it wasn't a crapshoot," Mr. Rocco said, "but you left a lot of things in the hands of the chemistry."

The idea of serendipity of photography is hardly a new one -- the William Eggleston or Garry Winogrand moments of the beauty in the mundane have been prominent since the 40s and 50s -- perhaps earlier, with Walker Evans. But, Rocco's images call to mind other photographers who use intentionally "lo-fi" cameras, like Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson, who took only a Holga with him traveling for 8 months, which led to his book Nonfiction. Both mediums shy away from what Rocco calls the "megapixelmania" of digital photography, some respite, perhaps, from Rocco's day-to-day shooting at the paper. This consciousness delineates the two groups, as the unknown chemistry of the tool is part of the thrill for Rocco and Anderson.

To see more of Shawn Rocco's cell phone images, visit his blog, Cellular Obscura.