Androids 2012 . 86th Street, New York City
Photos : Adrian WM Jones
Photo Documentary : Androids 2012
Its a lonely world without a phone. Those around you prefer digital company, you cannot ask for directions without interrupting, no way to exchange glances of attraction, the world is in love with the musician in their head. Standing on the corner of 86th St New York close to where I used to live, I took these shots over a few hours mainly around the crosswalk on 86th and Lexington. I shot hundreds of images in that time and each had cellular content. If I was a better photographer I would have more to display here but my point was to record the saturation, our willing departure from the present not to chase a collection of images over a period of months. The most disturbing thing at the time is that you could have probably torn down the buildings all around and only a handful would have would have noticed (unless it came via their phone).
This was something which had been on my mind for several years already but in 2012 a noticeable saturation had occurred. I've never looked into any data but as a photographer you spend a lot of your time watching others, that summer there was a tipping point, Blackberry was being abandon for Android, those with iphones were already on the same team so Google moped up the rest. Things are far worse today, we all take part, we don't challenge it, we endlessly embraces it, looking at these images now, although visually they are nothing exceptional, seeing all this distraction recorded in a very a short space of time right outside my door step on one crosswalk makes me wonder, where is it we are all longing to be other than right here?
Adrian WM Jones
Adrian Jones is a Connecticut based architectural photographer & documentary photographer. With over 20 years in the field he has worked in many areas of the film and photography industry and now uses his vast experience to focus on photographing architecture for architects and personal documentary projects.
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