iProbes and Hipstamatic iPhone photographs by Rita Leistner

Books in Visual Arts
Review: The International Centre of Photography library blog
Article: University of Toronto's Gift Guide
In this timely and highly original merging of theory and practice, conflict photographer and critical theorist Rita Leistner applies Marshall McLuhan’s semiotic theories of language, media and technology to iPhone photographs taken during a military embed in Afghanistan. Leistner was embedded for three weeks with the United States Marine Corps. When she returned to Canada in March 2011 she had an iPhone full of photographs and a preoccupation with the on-going chaos in Afghanistan. She was particularly concerned with the inability of American and International Security Forces (ISAF), including Canada, to do much about it, despite having an astounding battery of technology at their fingertips. This volume applies McLuhan’s theories in an original context to original material. In an entertaining and accessible application of McLuhan’s work, through a series of what Leistner calls iProbes—a portmanteau of iPhone and probe— the author reveals the face of war through the extensions of man.
by Julian Stallabrass
Smartphones + War in Afghanistan • Marshall McLuhan b.1911 in Alberta, Canada • The embed • Semiotics • Figure + Ground • Reading McLuhan • Musa Qala • The social media • River City • iPhone + the Hipstamatic app • The thingness of things • The iProbes • Prophylactive therapy
Camera obscura • Electric light • Typewriter • Telephone • Phonograph • Smart phone