The great disconnect

TNN | Updated: Nov 18, 2017, 23:45 IST

 

Chennai: Picture yourself and your family sitting on the living room sofa, each of you with a smart device — phone in your hand, another in your spouse's, your child playing with a tablet. Everyone's so connected. Now, remove the phones and tablet from the scene, but stay frozen in your poses. Do you feel the disconnect?

That's what got Eric Pickersgill started on his series 'Removed' in 2015. The US-based photographer — who is now in India working on part two of this photo-documentary — says the idea came to him one night when he was lying on his bed, phone in hand. "My wife and I were lying back to back, she had her phone, I had mine. My phone fell out of my hand, and as I leaned over to pick it up I noticed that my hand was still cupped like it was holding a phantom phone. I looked over at my wife, and wondered what it would be like if I shot everyday scenes of people with their mobile phones and iPads, but with the devices removed from their hands," says Pickersgill. "Removing the phone seemed to disrupt the scene, and make the real surreal," adds the 31-year-old, whose photo series went viral. "The idea was to show that our smartphones allow us to connect to people anywhere. But what kind of connection do they afford us? Some people who viewed the photographs didn't even notice the phones were removed. That's how much a part of us our mobile phones are," he adds.

A holiday in China placed Pickersgill in a rice field, and as he watched a farmer in a straw hat, against the backdrop of green fields, stop his work to answer his phone, the universality of his series struck him. "But China had restrictions in terms of doing a series there, so India became my first lap," says Pickersgill, who photo-stopped at Delhi, Rishikesh, Shillong and Mumbai.

One of the main differences between his original series and the one in India is the infusion of colour. Though his first series was black and white, Pickersgill realised India's vibrancy could not be contained in monochrome. "India has a lot of colour, it's overpowering," says Pickersgill, who works with film. "India was showing me how mobile phones could bring people together as well. So this series, which is also being made as a feature documentary, has a more rounded approach, showing how devices connect as well as disconnect, how new technologies create new behaviours."

In Kolkata, Pickersgill came across a group of girls in a cafe, standing on chairs and taking selfies. A few minutes later, they were seated side by side, sharing the photos. "We captured those very real moments, but with their permission removed the phones from their hands," says Pickersgill, who is creating the series in collaboration with calling app Tlkn. "The people, the poses, the scenarios we shoot are real, only the phones are missing," he adds.

In Shillong, Pickersgill captured a family at the dinner table, mum staring straight into the camera, the rest of her family staring deeply at their invisible mobiles. On a hillside, Pickersgill chanced upon a busload of tourists on a photo break, asked them to remain in pose, and then removed

their cellphones.

In Rishikesh, Pickersgill and crew interviewed a yogi, who spoke at length about how gestures were a way of displaying emotion and connection with the body, but the overuse of mobiles was changing body language from an instinctive action to a mere reaction. As the yogi paused in the middle of his discourse to answer his phone, Pickersgill asked him to freeze, then removed the phone from his hand, and took the shot. "The documentary is meant to open up conversation," says Pickersgill.