Apple Showcases iPhone 18 Pro Camera in 'What Holds Us' Photo Exhibition

Apple is opening a new photography exhibition titled "What Holds Us," featuring original work shot entirely on iPhone 18 Pro by Alex Prager, Jack Davison, and Jimmy Chin. The exhibition opens in New York City on Friday, September 18, before traveling to London and Shanghai in the coming months.



Curated by Kathy Ryan, the former longtime director of photography for The New York Times Magazine, the exhibition explores moments of touch, care, shared experience, and the people and places that connect us. Ryan said the theme reflects an increasingly fragmented world while giving three artists room to approach connection from different perspectives.


The project also serves as a showcase for the iPhone 18 Pro camera system, which introduces variable aperture for the first time on an iPhone. Apple says the system offers improved low-light photography, sharper detail, and more creative control.

Jimmy Chin

Adventure photographer and filmmaker Jimmy Chin traveled to the Bugaboo Mountains in southeastern British Columbia, where he photographed climbers, including Conrad Anker, against the scale of the snow-covered range. His series combines close-ups, aerial views, and action shots captured with iPhone 18 Pro, including its 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide camera.



Chin and his crew worked in winds reaching 70 miles per hour, making the phone's compact size particularly useful in an environment where every piece of equipment mattered. He said the camera let him trust both close details and massive panoramas would hold at size. "I was not thinking about gear. I was thinking about what was in front of me," Chin said.

Jack Davison

Jack Davison built his series around people interacting with clay, focusing on physicality, texture, and human touch. Shot in a former sugar warehouse in London, the portraits use the strong blacks and whites associated with his work while showing subjects shaping clay, covering themselves with it, and leaving fingerprints behind.



Davison said using an iPhone let him maintain a more direct connection with his subjects because he could hold it lower instead of placing a larger camera in front of his face. He also highlighted the ability to switch lenses, use slower shutter speeds, and shoot RAW.

Alex Prager

Alex Prager created staged crowd scenes and intimate portraits on a Los Angeles soundstage, building a cinematic world that does not belong to a clearly defined era. Her images move between overhead views of a crowd winding down after a celebration and closer compositions that isolate individual subjects and details.



Prager described the iPhone 18 Pro camera as being closer to a video stream, an idea that influenced how she approached the sequence of images. Ryan said the production challenged the camera while still allowing Prager to maintain the visual standards of a major film set.

Exhibition Dates

"What Holds Us" will be displayed in New York City from September 18 through September 20. Apple says the exhibition will travel to London and Shanghai over the coming months.