124 images Created 16 Aug 2019
Screen Time by Dafydd Jones
Today almost everyone uses a smartphone, and most of us are addicted. In every social situation the smartphone is not only killing conversation, it’s changing the way we look at the world
In 2008, I was sent to Miami to cover a party hosted by Vogue Italia during the Art Basel fair. Although it was one of the week’s most glamorous parties, I noticed a single man apparently oblivious to the fabulous group of women he was with, so engrossed was he in his phone. Maybe he was texting his friends to tell them how lucky he was. Possibly he was a pioneer tweeter. Whatever his fixation, he was definitely missing the action.
That was the first time. Then gradually I began to see the same thing happening more and more. The light emitted by the phone can be very flattering, and there is something quite beautiful about someone transfixed in that way, almost in another world, isolated in a crowded scene. Instinctively, at first, I began to seek out these instances.
When the then editor of the Oldie magazine, Alexander Chancellor, suggested I contribute a regular feature called ‘The Way we Live Now’, he noticed how many of my pictures featured people glued to their phones. Old people, young people, mothers with children, workmen, cops, cyclists, everyone – in shops, in the street, on the train, in galleries, in bars and restaurants, everywhere. I’ve even seen a man standing at a urinal, a phone cradled in his free hand. Screen time is all-consuming.
Screen Time published by Circa.
Available from Amazon and all good bookshops. Signed copies available from https://www.setantabooks.com. 12 pictures from the book will be shown at PHOTO NORTH FESTIVAL in Harrogate. 30 Nov- 2 December.
In 2008, I was sent to Miami to cover a party hosted by Vogue Italia during the Art Basel fair. Although it was one of the week’s most glamorous parties, I noticed a single man apparently oblivious to the fabulous group of women he was with, so engrossed was he in his phone. Maybe he was texting his friends to tell them how lucky he was. Possibly he was a pioneer tweeter. Whatever his fixation, he was definitely missing the action.
That was the first time. Then gradually I began to see the same thing happening more and more. The light emitted by the phone can be very flattering, and there is something quite beautiful about someone transfixed in that way, almost in another world, isolated in a crowded scene. Instinctively, at first, I began to seek out these instances.
When the then editor of the Oldie magazine, Alexander Chancellor, suggested I contribute a regular feature called ‘The Way we Live Now’, he noticed how many of my pictures featured people glued to their phones. Old people, young people, mothers with children, workmen, cops, cyclists, everyone – in shops, in the street, on the train, in galleries, in bars and restaurants, everywhere. I’ve even seen a man standing at a urinal, a phone cradled in his free hand. Screen time is all-consuming.
Screen Time published by Circa.
Available from Amazon and all good bookshops. Signed copies available from https://www.setantabooks.com. 12 pictures from the book will be shown at PHOTO NORTH FESTIVAL in Harrogate. 30 Nov- 2 December.
