Eric Pickersgill from the USA created a series of photos with people looking into the smartphone, which they have in hand. The aim of the project Removed – to show how stupid people look when that and a second can not live without mobile devices.
Pickersgill decided to create a series of black and white photos after a morning in the cafe in Troy (new York). Next to him sat a family whose members did not communicate with each other because were busy with their smartphones.
“They were so distant from each other, — he writes. Almost communicated with each other. The father and two daughters were their smartphones. Mother or not, or she chose not to get it. She looks out the window, sad and lonely in the company of their closest relatives”. The father was distracted more often than others, from time to time talking about what I read. But he did not answer, says the photographer.
After this episode, the author began to pay attention to people who are too much busy with their smartphone. “I see this family at the store, in schools, on sidewalks and in bed when I fall asleep next to my wife,” he says.
Pickersgill removed the phones from their hands people, leaving them to stare into the void, thereby reinforcing the absurdity of modern dependent gadgets. In photos people with empty hands lying in bed, watching TV, chatting with friends and family, are the tractor, barbecue.
The artist is sure that smartphones in some sense become part of the body of modern people: “These phantom limbs tell strangers about employment and stability”. However, they are also “divided attention between those who are near and those who have been there”.
