ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that camera phone photographs accentuate the significance of location in mobile communication, from being mere points of communication into being individual places, places with identity. The indexicality of the photograph serves as the guarantee of presence. Thus, the location is not just a point of communication and mobile communication is not only about engagement in the phonespace. When using the camera phone to capture and communicate a photograph, one's presence in the place can be the purpose and motivation for the act of communication, similarly to when a user checks in on Swarm. In Augmented Reality (AR) applications, the camera apparatus in the phone is given an additional role when, in addition to capturing images of places, it mediates location-based information to the user. The global positioning system (GPS) features in mobile phones, that enable many location-based services applications, can further amplify the physical location in photographs, as when photographs are supplemented with location-related metadata.
