These photos show the joy of partaking in ‘mobile phone behaviour’

When Chinese photographer Trunk Xu first fell in love with street photography, he says the magic was in it being a stolen moment, with the subject usually unaware their photo was being taken. Today, everyone is ready for their close-up. “Everyone is ready to be photographed,” he says. “The invention of the mobile phone has changed everything over the years – even the view of the street.” Xu is based in Beijing, so we chatted over a video call from New York before the opening of Joy, in 3 Parts, curated by Kathy Ryan. This marks the second consecutive year that Kathy Ryan has overseen the multi-city exhibition curation. For the show, which will debut in London, New York and Shanghai simultaneously on Friday, September 19, Apple enlisted visual artists Inez and Vinoodh, Mickalene Thomas and Xu himself to create new work entirely on the upcoming iPhone 17 Pro Max.

As the name suggests, this year’s show follows joy as a pure expression – a feeling that “stops time, and yet, ripples outward”, according to the exhibition statement. “The first thing was to think of the theme, knowing this would be out at the end of summer, and I thought about just the three-letter word,” Ryan said during an early walkthrough of the exhibition. “I liked the idea that we could somehow give the artists a simple prompt with tremendous possibilities of interpretation, just expansive enough to have an open field to work with.” Xu interpreted this year’s joyous theme as an opportunity to portray how iPhone photography has quietly slipped into our lives. “Most of the pictures [in the exhibition] are of mobile phone behaviour,” he says. “It's basically street photography to show how the world looks after being changed by the invention of the phone.” In some moments, it’s mobile inception – capturing iPhones taking photos of other iPhones, on an iPhone.

Far from the usual take of teens being “glued to their phones”, Xu’s interpretation of joy showcases the tender beauty of being able to capture loved ones at any given moment, and how that changes the way we interact in spaces (and with each other). In the series, there are young and older couples posing for each other at the beach, skaters capturing tricks and people filming friends playing pool. “My kids hate being photographed, so I have to secretly shoot them when I want to get the moment,” says Xu. “A phone is always the best thing to do that, and I think in real life, it’s not about the tools you’re using, it’s about getting the right moment.” A master of light and shadow, Xu’s photos for the exhibition (of course) ended up entrenched in his signature cinematic sensibilities. After “accidentally” becoming a fashion photographer at the start of Chinese fashion magazines, his work lives in the space between identity and performance, the candid and the choreographed.

Xu shows me photos of himself taking accidental selfies behind the scenes. “I was shooting the skateboarder but accidentally pressed selfie mode, so I got this shot,” he says. His face in the photo is pure joy. He says it’s because he was doing what he loves. “My work and the people in my work can all explain the word joy,” says Xu. Thomas turned her camera on Fort Greene Park in a love letter to Black joy, and a celebration of simply being. For photographic partners Inez and Vinoodh, capturing joy meant contrasting the vast Marfa desert landscape with the intimacy between two young lovers, their son Charles Matadin and his girlfriend Natalie Brumley, in a cocoon-like embrace.

“You have to plan like crazy, but what makes photography special is the serendipity of the flair that was in the sky – it was only going to last a couple of minutes,” says Ryan, referring to one of Inez and Vinoodh’s photos in the exhibition. “It becomes sublime with a thing you couldn’t have anticipated but embrace, because you’re in the position to capture it.” (There’s a lesson to be learned about embracing unexpected joy in there somewhere.) 

‘Joy, in 3 Parts’ is open in New York on Friday from 12-6pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 9am-6pm at 456 W. 18th Street or in Shanghai on Saturday and Sunday from 10am-6pm at Xintai Warehouse (No. 77 North Shanxi Road, Jing'an District). The London exhibition is invite-only.