I certainly agree that the artist must have been thinking. In judging a piece of art, however, I seem to be stuck on standards elicited by a 19th-century literary critic -- Saint Beuve, I think -- which I have always remembered, despite the fact that my recollection of its attribution may be incorrect. Whoever this critic may have been, he had three considerations he found useful in judging the value of any work of art. They are:

1) What was the artist attempting to do ?
2) How difficult was it to do this ?
3) Was it worth doing ?

Perhaps (1) is make a statement about the impermanence of cell-phone photos. (2) Doesn't seem to me to be at all difficult. All that is necessary is a shovel and several hours of scooping. (People do this in horse stalls all the time, expressing their conviction and making the "statement" that a horse stall should be clean.) And (3) If a statement that cell-phone photos of whatever they are are impermanent is a deep philosophical observation, it has been made about art many, many times before. I would be more inclined to see value in a statement that revealed something new that we all (especially in this forum) didn't realize.

As for the technical wizardry and skill used in making a photograph itself of all these discarded photos, I don't see any.

But you know what ? Perhaps my contention that this isn't art and isn't worth anything is undermined by the fact that the artist certainly has caught our attention and made us think and express ourselves. Interesting paradox.

But I stick with my view that worthwhile art necessarily involves skill in the media in which one is working. This heap of photos was all too easy.