Eric Pickersgill photographs people posing with phones removed from their hands

A Striking Statement by the Photographer Eric Pickersgill: the Series Removed.

People have fused with their devices swiftly and irreversibly. At first, personal gadgets were very convenient helpers: they solved everyday tasks, made it easier to keep in touch with loved ones, to store and pass on information, to take photographs and to be amused. The advantages of technical novelties are obvious, but social and physical consequences gradually make themselves felt, and these at times look alarming. Just as photography once transformed lived experience into something photographable, personal mobile devices have changed our behaviour, becoming part of the daily routine and, in the end, an inseparable extension of the body, as though grown fast to the hand.

Eric Pickersgill calls the telephone a phantom limb, which we use as a way of showing that we are busy and unapproachable to strangers.

Smartphones, under the influence of their addictive power, encourage a division of attention between those who are physically with us and those who are not.

Pickersgill photographs people who seem to be holding mobile devices, although the devices have been physically removed from the sitter's hand. They are asked to keep their gaze and pose while the photographer takes away their device, and only then does he make the picture. The photographs are a reconstruction of scenes that the author experiences every day.