The Art of iPhone Destruction

A 3G iPhone with a bullet hole. Photograph by Michael Tompert and Paul Fairchild

If you love Apple, you may want to avert your eyes.

A controversial new photography show from artist Michael Tompert features high-res photographs of destroyed Apple products — iPhones with bullet holes, iPads melted by blowtorches and iPods run over by a train — and it’s all to make you question your obsession with gadgetry.

Tompert’s project, which can currently be seen at Whitespace gallery in Palo Alto, Calif. (near the home of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, no less), features ultra high-resolution digital images of the latest Apple electronic devices utterly demolished. Tompert spent months buying up the gizmos before beating, burning and shooting them up.

A San Francisco-based graphic designer and a former Apple employee, Tompert says the idea came to him after seeing his two children fight over their iPod Christmas presents. Fed up, Tompert says he grabbed one of the devices and smashed it on the ground.

“They were kind of stunned – the screen was broken and this liquid poured out of it. I got my camera to shoot it,” Tompert said. “My wife told me that i should do something with it.”

The moment sparked a bigger project, and before long Tompert and photographer Paul Fairchild had created 12 large images of everything from a 3G iPhone blasted by a Hechler & Koch handgun to a set of iPod Nanos that he had run over by a train.

To some the project seems bizarre and wasteful. But for others, the striking images have a weird way of forcing us to see our beloved, expensive doohickeys in a whole new light.

“They’re designed to be so bare-boned and simple — like the monolith in 2001 — and everyone is going crazy around it,” Tompert says. “I wanted to say relax, let’s see what’s in it.”

To see more of Michael Tompert and Paul Fairchild’s photographs, click here.