A High-Society Photographer Has Captured the Way Smartphones Have Made Zombies Out of Guests at Elite Parties. It’s Disturbing

Dafydd Jones was on assignment a decade ago at a glamorous Art
Basel in Miami Beach party, and he kept spotting people staring at
their phones. The veteran English society photographer was
there to shoot celebrities and people dressed to the nines; he
thought it was a bit odd when he saw a man enraptured by his phone
while ignoring the fabulous group of women surrounding him. This
was just a year after the release of the first iPhone, and
nomophobia (the fear of being without one’s cell phone) wasn’t yet
a thing.

“Maybe he was texting his friends to tell them how lucky he
was,” Jones muses, in a description of his recently released book,
Screen Time. “Possibly he was a pioneer tweeter. Whatever
his fixation, he was definitely missing the action.”

Jones started noticing more and more instances of cell phone
addiction—both among regular folks and celebrities, such as Damien
Hirst, Stephen Fry, and Ronnie Wood—and he began documenting them
while out on gigs for Tatler and Vanity
Fair, among other magazines. “These pictures came about
as a kind of by-product of other jobs,” Jones told Artnet
News. “But gradually I was building up a collection.”

Jones’ collection is a hyper-exaggerated illustration of people
who should be present in the moment, but are instead lost in
digital reverie. The 100 color photographs in Screen Time aren’t of people checking
their devices while in line at the supermarket, or while sitting on
park benches as their kids play. Jones collects images of people at
decadent parties and special events, surrounded by haute couture,
fine art, and gilded architecture, all the while staring down into
the hypnotic light of their mobile phone screens.

After Circa Press became interested in publishing a book of
Jones’s smartphone photos, he was sent on assignment to look
specifically for these images. He added about 15 more on trips to
New York and Venice, and played around with technique. “I began to
switch the flash off,” Jones says. “I loved the eerie light,
and photographing in challenging lighting
conditions.”

Jones has documented our growing attachment to cell phones as
these devices have become an indispensable part of our everyday
lives. His photographs are playful, but he is genuinely concerned.
“I think we are all becoming seriously addicted,” Jones warns. “And
it is very worrying.”

The post A High-Society Photographer Has Captured the Way
Smartphones Have Made Zombies Out of Guests at Elite Parties. It’s
Disturbing appeared first on artnet News.