The mobile phone has profoundly transformed the way we interact with the world. As an indispensable communication tool, it shapes our behaviours, postures, and relationship with public space. As a street photographer, I have been a witness to these silent changes for 20 years. Today, it has become almost banal, even boring, to photograph someone absorbed in their mobile phone. Yet, these ordinary scenes reveal a new reality of our time.
Studies on our behaviours indicate that we interact with our phone between fifty and one hundred times a day. Whether it’s for navigating the city, finding a restaurant, listening to music, replying to a message, checking social media, or simply taking a photo, the phone is almost constantly in our hands. These interactions are now part of the visual landscape of cities. Thus, every daily action can be interrupted, influenced, or enriched by this new technology.
Some spaces, over time, have taken on a theatrical dimension, becoming backdrops for selfies and posts shared on social media. Tourists, or even locals, no longer just visit a monument; they search for the perfect angle to immortalise their presence and share it. Formerly peaceful spots are now crowded, shaped by fleeting trends often created by influencers.
These places lose their essence, becoming mere digital backdrops, but they are a phenomenon that reveals a universal desire for connection, sharing, and belonging. The need to capture one’s daily life through images, to immortalise a moment or place, is not entirely new, but it is in fact a contemporary amplification of the human experience.
These scenes tell the story of our time. And the mobile phone is its symbol. It is at the heart of the transformation in our relationship with our environment. Photographing these moments is to document a subtle yet profound change: that of a society where attention, once directed towards others and the environment, now shifts towards a screen.
The phone is everywhere, but the street remains a theatre of humanity. As a photographer, I have indirectly and sometimes consciously photographed and documented this transformation. Observing and capturing these scenes, sometimes incongruous, is to bear witness to the changes in our society while continuing to document the beauty and poetry of our everyday lives.
FINE ART PRINT