Windows Phone

Yvonne Doll started Sleepy Urbanite as a way to collect thoughts and images from her daily commute in Chicago. In her own words, it’s a “freaky love-child of my frustration with slogging away in day job land and my unwavering compulsion to make art.” She studied Fine Art in Chicago, with a minor in photo, and from that developed a love of lomo and toy camera photography.

Yvonne has used a variety of different phones for her art, relishing in the challenges that each one presents. One she describes as “terrible lens, pretty low quality,” but once she started viewing at as a different medium, like lomo and toy cameras, she started to have fun with it, using the wrong settings to create interesting effects. Now she uses a current generation smartphone, which is even more of a challenge, because it’s much higher quality than her previous models. She also uses a few filters in post to get the effect she’s after, rarely using one in particular.

The majority of Yvonne’s work is taking surreptitious snaps of sleeping commuters on her way to and from work. Her Sleep Urbanite series, which currently sports approximately 270 photos captures people whilst their snoozing on the train;

“It sort of happened by accident. I ride the train to work in the winter time. When I first got a cell phone with a camera I was just playing around with it on the train one morning and snapped off a few pictures of people asleep. Then I really started to pay more attention and honestly thought it was such a strange and wonderful juxtaposition; people doing this very private thing in public. When you think about it, we only usually think of a small circle of people who have seen us asleep, except if you do it on the train.”

Yvonne’s other sets include Found:Art, which pays “freakishly close attention to the everydayness” of the city, and Urban Heiroglypics, which looks at messages left all around Chicago. However, her most recent project is the Big Picture Project, where Yvonne is crowdsourcing phone photographs to create a large gallery that is made up of individual moments caught on the fly.

“The idea is that while we are in an age where we are provided the tools to instantly express ourselves, the world is moving at a blistering pace. It makes me wonder how we will change as a society, how we are as a whole instead of individuals. I liked the idea of a live instant mosaic; big picture status of people from all over. The Big Picture Project is sort of like a massive patch quilt. One day I’d like to create a live photo booth that you could walk inside and be surrounded by instantly updating pictures from around the world. (Grant anyone?)”

One of the questions we were interested in was the role that technology is playing in art. There is a camp that strongly believes that technology is killing art, with the proliferation of amazing quality ‘point and click’ cameras and phone cameras, as well as post-production tools, like Photoshop or Expression, becoming mainstream, enabling almost anyone to alter their work to make it look perfect. However, Yvonne sees it in a different light.

“I think it’s a different medium, like using oil paint as opposed to acrylic. They behave differently. That’s the way I look at it. I mean, truly there really is nothing quite like the happy accident, physical film and putting your hands (ok don’t do this kids) into a tub of photo chemicals to work on the print. I think this is why things like lomo photography and toy cameras have such a devout following of artists.   I think digital photography has its place. It does sort of make it easier for anyone to get a technically beautiful shot, but getting that something else, that indefinable “thing” that some photos have, has nothing to do with the technology – it’s the artist.”

Similarly, the fact that it’s a different medium is why using a phone appeals to Yvonne, as opposed to using a digital camera.

“It’s instant. I can instantly share photos with the masses… I also really like the challenge of the medium. I keep striving to make images that are uniquely in a cell phone genre. I’m not trying to make these pictures look like nice digital camera pics, although with some apps… you can come pretty close.”

Next up for Yvonne is considering the ‘real life’ application for these works. Do they get shown in a gallery or do they remain digital?

“I’m fascinated by the idea of how our digital life effects how we interact in “real life” and in turn how to present these types of images in a tangible form. I keep thinking it’s kind of a shame that we will eventually (if not already) loose the printed photo.

There is something really nice about a yellowed photo of yourself from childhood; it ages with you. It shows time. Photos will cease to show ‘time’.”

Yvonne’s work can be seen at www.SleepyUrbanite.com, and The Big Picture Project can be found at www.showmethebigpicture.com.