‘It struck me as a minimalist tableau’: Henk Stam’s best phone picture

Henk Stam is no newcomer to photography: he received his first camera for his 11th birthday, sixty years ago. Yet the rise of phone photography left him unconvinced for a long time. "My first portable phone, that we used to call 'a brick', had a terrible camera that took fuzzy pictures," he recalls. Like most people, he gradually noticed steady improvements in the technology, to the point where he now considers some of his phone images worth sharing.

The photograph in question was taken at Portlantis, a visitors' centre in the Port of Rotterdam that opened in spring 2025. Stam himself describes the image, dominated entirely by the colour orange, as striking him "as a minimalist tableau." Born in the Netherlands, Stam spent his working life in Canada before returning to his home country upon retirement. He visited Portlantis on a Monday with a friend from his photo club.

The pair arrived to find the centre closed for the day. Just as they were about to leave empty-handed, a large tour bus filled with teenagers pulled up. "We simply joined the slipstream as they entered; no one batted an eyelid," Stam says. Taking advantage of this unexpected opportunity, he was able to wander the building and capture the orange-toned composition inside its toilets.

The anecdote reflects a broader shift: smartphones have democratised architectural and street photography, allowing skilled amateurs like Stam to capture fleeting scenes without professional equipment. Portlantis, a recently opened centre devoted to exploring Rotterdam's port, thus became — quite by accident — the backdrop for an image owing as much to chance as to its author's practised eye.

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Written by the ADM desk based on The Guardian — Art. Read the original article for the full story.