Mobile phones are arguably the greatest invention of our generation. This piece of battery-operated gadget helps us connect with people even in places farthest from us. Yet, despite of the bridge it has built for us to communicate with both strangers and loved ones, it has also created a wall that separates us from real human interaction.
It’s like a double-edged sword, so to speak.
It has become a usual scenario to see family, friends and couples who are together but their faces buried on the mobile devices. They are together, there is close physical contact, they are within speaking and hearing distance—but there is no actual communication.
A photographer from North Carolina, USA decided to show how we are so dependent on our smartphones that they have already consumed us and taken us away from our loved ones and the opportunities to interact—physically—with one another.
Eric Pickersgill released his project, titled “Removed” which is a series of photos of people staring at their hands, as if holding a mobile device. The subjects posed with gadgets, which have been "edited out" or physically removed before the photo was taken. The resulting images show a lonely scene wherein people opt to look at their devices instead of engaging in human connection or enjoying their surroundings.
The sadder thing: these images happen around us on a daily basis—you are even probably guilty of it.
In his project statement, Pickersgill said he became inspired to do the series after observing a family having breakfast in New York, all of whom on their phones but the mother.
“Mom doesn’t have one (phone) or chooses to leave it put away. She stares out the window, sad and alone in the company of her closest family,” shared Pickersgill.
He added, “It was one of those moments where you see something so amazingly common that it startles you into consciousness of what’s actually happening and it is impossible to forget.”
The 29-year-old photographer admitted of doing the same thing and as he and his wife would frequently turn their backs on each other to coddle their “small, cold, illuminated devices every night.”
The black and white photographs represent reenactments of scenes that happen daily: a couple in bed, mother and daughter sitting on a sofa, a family around a dining table, a group of friends. They are all in close proximity to each other but they are not talking, not interacting.
It is sad that we are living in a world where we’d rather communicate with an inanimate object. We are together, we are connected, but at the same time, we are alone in our own bubble.
Maybe it’s high time that we put our phones down and be in the moment. Stop asking your friends to “like” your photos on Facebook and instead tell them, face-to-face, how much you adore whatever it is you’d rather put a virtual thumbs up on.
