North Carolina photographer Eric Pickersgill had just gotten married when he left for an artist’s residency program in upstate New York. He was feeling homesick and a little disconnected. Then one morning, he went to a local café and noticed a family eating breakfast together… but apart. All but one was connected to a gadget.
“They were all sharing the same physical space, however they were engaging with people and content elsewhere, and maybe it was the beautiful light and the mother who wasn’t using a device that made me see the situation as a photograph,” Pickersgill tells SheKnows. In that moment, an idea for a photo series began to take shape.
Removed is Pickersgill’s series, an exploration of moments when people have tuned out from one another and tuned in to their gadgets. In photo after photo, thanks to Pickersgill’s artistry, we get to see how we would appear without a phone in hand… but our attention turned elsewhere.
The photo above was borne of his first idea: “One night after getting back from the residency, I slipped back into my old ways of using my device while in bed with my wife despite having that moment of realization in New York. As my eyes began to slowly close while checking my emails, I awoke to the sound of my phone hitting the floor. Before I thought to bend over the edge to pick it up, I looked at my partially curled open palm resting on the edge of the bed that still held the shape of my dropped device. I realized that was how I would be able to make the photographs for Removed.”
Wedded bliss
His subjects are all “in” on the topic of Removed; he doesn’t just sneak up on unwitting subjects.
Snapping away
The fact that Pickersgill uses technology to create these photos isn’t hypocritical, he says. He’s not anti-technology.
“These photographs are existing in people’s lives as a way to make them pay attention to this social shift,” he notes.
The neighbors
He’s not anti-gadget either. “I do think you need to be aware of how long you are spending on your device and be deliberate about it,” he says.
What’s there?
How do subjects react to Removed? “When I approach people to make the work, they tend to smile first once they hear the concept, and then they realize that it’s speaking to a larger context than themselves,” he says.
Cody and Erica
“Once you see yourself within the photograph, you become a little more aware of what’s going on,” Pickersgill says.
Cuddling
Pickersgill uses his phone too: “I just personally need the reminder to put it down, because it is an addiction.”
On the water
At play
“The absence of the device points to it more so than if it were present,” says Pickersgill. “The device being removed also means that the person in the photograph must perform this gesture. They know what the photograph is about and are willing to work with me to make this art. It is a collaboration of sorts.”
Head-on
Cookin’
“I’m not attempting to tell others what to do with their time,” Pickersgill says. “I’m just hopefully offering up a moment of realization much like the one that I experienced in the café at the onset of the project.”
Couch potatoes
Let me take a photo
The man who minds
Snip, snip
Mom and Dad
Photo of a photo
Side by side
Ice cream
Of his subjects, Pickersgill says, “It gives us a platform to interact with one another and to then make something together.”
Mom
The whole family
At the store
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