At some point in my teens I had seen, in a magazine, a photo essay on Sophia Loren taking to the streets wearing a wig, maybe a scarf and large unflattering dark glasses - to take photographs. Google 'Sophia Loren took photographs', as I have just done, and the results are all about images taken of her. I can still see the black and white double page spread - images, again of her, albeit in disguise. The piece was still largely about her appearance, and not her photographs. Thrillingly now, living in the liberating anonymity of London, I can do what I longed for in my twenties. I can kneel by any piece of treasure in the street in pretty much complete freedom.
Shifting focus slightly - in a footnote, Dyer speaks of models and photographer becoming 'addicted to...the magic of what they saw in the ground glass' as much as the resultant photos. Edward Weston worked with a 4 x 5 inch camera of delicious 'brilliance and clarity'. IPhone delivers at times clarity and at times a lustrous diffusion. If my harvest of images has been good - I can escape from a stressful commute into a glowing world in the palm of my hand (an alternative to the default dive into the distinctly unmagical pages of the free papers).