Utopian modern life without smartphones in pictures by Eric Pickersgill

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Armed with a camera, Eric Pickersgill travels through Northern California, capturing memorable black-and-white photographs of people bogged down in their smartphones. He takes the phones out of their hands, leaving strangers to stare into the void, thereby reinforcing the absurdity of modern gadget addiction.

Sitting once in a cafe in a small American town, Eric drew attention to a family whose members were absolutely far from each other, being very close. The father and two daughters did not look up from their smartphones, and my mother, not knowing what to do with herself, looked out the window and was sad. The head of the family was distracted from time to time to report the next "incredible" news from the Internet, and, without receiving the proper reaction from others, immediately returned to the online world.

I am saddened by the use of interaction technologies instead of real interaction. I hadn't thought about it before, and at that moment I realized that this trend is the price that society pays for a new experience. While I was thinking, Mom took her smartphone out of her pocket.

The family, the face of the mother, the teenage girls, the position in which the father was sitting, and the utmost concentration on the palms of the hands were for a long time embedded in consciousness. This is one of those moments when something utterly mundane shocks, revealing a frightening reality. The same obsession accompanied me in shops, in class, on the side of the highway, and even in bed with my wife. We fell asleep back to back, nursing small, cold, glowing devices in our hands.

According to the Pew Research Center, 93% of American smartphone users find their gadgets useful, and 46% cannot imagine life without them. 47% of respondents aged 18-29 use a smartphone to distance themselves from everyone around, and 93% prefer devices as a cure for boredom. According to KPCB research, the average smartphone user takes about three hours every day. On the scale of one year, this adds up to 46 days.

We subconsciously determine when a person is using a smartphone by their characteristic facial expressions. When we see these signs, there is no need for the physical presence of the phone to uniquely identify the situation.

Eric's project reflects the frightening reality of modern society. Pickersgill traveled around Northern California, meeting companies of people busy with their smartphones, and captured them in the same pose, but without a phone in their hands.

When I asked strangers for help with the project, they found the concept amusing. But after a while they realized the scale of the problem.