"It's a feeling. It illustrates a moment in someone's life, when this person feels disconnected from the reality while being part of it, and suddenly wakes up. It is something undefined, a feeling that is hardly touchable or noticed by himself or others. It's not sad or happy, it's floating in between, it's almost normal but slightly weird. But it is "Something Real"

Romain Laurent.

SOMETHING REAL 

by Romain Laurent

In the series ‘Hide And Seek’, photographer Kamil Kotarba reflects on how the rise of mobile screens negatively influences the way we connect and interact with others. His photographs capture daily scenes, such as a dinner for two and an evening on the couch, yet only show arms attached to mobile phones without the bodies. On the inspiration behind the series, Kotarba says: “A virtual world always competes with a real world. Instead of focusing on interaction with other people, we prefer to stare at a small mobile screen which constantly offers us new incentives. The incentives which we choose without any restrictions of space and time in which we are currently in. Thanks to this diversity, this form of activity seems to be far more interesting than what we are doing. Maybe it’s really more interesting? Although we are still in a real space, it seems like we aren’t there.

The real life happening around just eludes us. We are somewhere ‘in between’. We don’t bother being. We choose the lack of participation. At the same time we are online – still in touch with our friends. We hide behind mobile screens. We play hide and seek.”

HIDE AND SEEK

by Kamil Kotarba

French photographer Antoine Geiger creates photos of people having their faces sucked into their cellphones. The project, titled SUR-FAKE, touches on issues of technology dependance and addiction: “It is placing the screen as an object of ‘mass subculture’, alienating the relation to our own body, and more generally to the physical world.”

“Nothing was staged. I went out and captured reality,”

SURREAL PORTRAITS

by Angela Burón

SUR-FAKE

by Antoine Geiger

MORE ARTISTS

http://www.celesteprize.com/artwork/ido:339497/

LIKE · DISLIKE

by Javier Rubín Grassa

Somos una generación centrada en los instantes que nos acontecen. Lo que ocurrió o queda por ocurrir ya no toma más relevancia que lo que sucede ahora, ya, en este instante. Imágenes que nos invaden, personas que aparecen, cada día una nueva, y el poder en nuestras manos de dejar constancia que lo que vemos “Me Gusta”, “No me Gusta” o, por el contrario, damos paso a la indiferencia, que en ocasiones demuestra más nuestra opinión que los interruptores aprobatorios. Sufrimos una búsqueda incesante de aprobación por nuestros congéneres, amigos, familiares, amantes o personas que queremos sorprender. Incluso con intención de llegar a más gente desconocida. La generación del Like buscamos llamar la atención, demostrar que somos diferentes, que los demás nos aprueban y admiran de alguna manera, porque sino, no encajaríamos en este engranaje en el que mi historia pasa al segundo plano y mi six-pack al primero.

Un mundo físico, de apariencia, en el que cada vez menos llama la atención un trasfondo y solo queda cabida la fachada, la primera toma de contacto en la que lo que veo me atrae y doy paso a dejarme sorprender por lo que hay detrás. El poder en nuestras manos, que con tan solo un gesto podemos llegar a desechar o aceptar conocer a alguien.

www.jrubingrassa.com

www.antoinegeiger.com

www.facebook.com/kotarbakamil/

www.angelaburon.com

www.romain-laurent.com

.identidad

.Redes sociales / identidad

.Redes sociales (Consumo)

.Redes sociales (dependencia)

.sociedad / incomunicación / autoprotección

.Publicidad / nuevas tecnologías

SONY PSP

by Jesus Alonso

www.jesusalonsostudio.com

The joining of people to devices has been rapid and unalterable. The application of the personal device in daily life has made tasks take less time. Far away places and people feel closer than ever before. Despite the obvious benefits that these advances in technology have contributed to society, the social and physical implications are slowly revealing themselves. In similar ways that photography transformed the lived experience into the photographable, performable, and reproducible experience, personal devices are shifting behaviors while simultaneously blending into the landscape by taking form as being one with the body. This phantom limb is used as a way of signaling busyness and unapproachability to strangers while existing as an addictive force that promotes the splitting of attention between those who are physically with you and those who are not.

REMOVED

.Redes sociales (dependencia)

by Erick pickers gill

http://www.ericpickersgill.com/Removed

LA DEPENDENCIA

AFRONTAR REALIDAD

IDENTIDAD

BACK PORTRAITS

by Daniel Coves

LONELY WINDOW

by Julien Mauve

Digital interfaces have totally changed how we perceive and interact with the outside world. It’s taught us new ways to communicate without physically seeing or speaking to one another. Through its digital twilight glow, the screen becomes a window, opening to a new world while simultaneously introducing a new kind of loneliness.

“Lonely Window explores the darker side effects of omnipresent modes of virtual communication; a new brand of loneliness specific to the digital age that has transformed the screens all around us into barrieres instead of portals to the world beyond. The men and women photographed are entranced by the screens in front of them, so concentrated that they are absent from the physical reality around them and don’t notice that digital technology has invaded every corner of their homes ”

GREETINGS FROM MARS

by Julien Mauve

In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America. Less than 500 years later, it has become a common touristic destination for wealthy people from every part of the world. What remains of the Wild West has now been transformed into National Park where people can quietly enjoy breathtaking landscapes.

Unknown worlds are now located far from Earth and our most famous explorer is a robot. "Curiosity" is the Christopher Columbus of our century, crawling the surface of Mars, searching for clues and information about its past. As with the Wild West, we could imagine a point where Mars would become a touristic destination for people to visit and experience. NASA and SpaceX are already working on it and if no catastrophic event happen, in less than 50 years, humans will walk on Mars.

I have always wondered what it would be like to discover a totally different world, lifeless, full of wild landscapes and to photograph it for the first time as if I was Ansel Adams. So I came up with this project, which is about space exploration and discovery. But it's also about our behavior in front of landscapes and how we create pictures that will share our personal story with the world. In every spots I stopped, carefully chosen for their similarities with the red planet, I imitated stereotypical tourist poses. It's interesting to observe the way we act in front of the camera, how we include ourselves in the landscapes, how those landscapes trigger the desire to affirm our presence. And how the way we take pictures exposes the vanity involved in our endless pursuit of self-definition.

Some years ago, taking pictures of landscapes was enough. And we were not able to share them before we came back home. Today we have added ourselves on the pictures. Our faces are everywhere. We share everything instantly; we feel the need to do it. The connection is permanent and the experience becomes different. With Internet available everywhere, there is no "being-far-away" anymore. So we might ask ourselves, do we travel to discover new places, change of scene, new cultures, or do we travel to look for pictures of ourselves and to prove that we exist ?

DEPENDENCIA

COMPORTAMIENTO SOCIAL EN REDES

EXPLORAR LO DESCONOCIDO

CLICHÉS

SOLEDAD

"HOY"

by Angela Losa

RELACIONES CONTEMPORANEAS

Hoy, la cantidad de fotografías que tomamos y utilizamos en los diálogos con otros se dispara. La tecnología digital y la convergencia de distintos medios juega un papel significativo en la transformación del panorama fotográfico.

El paisaje propuesto por Ángela Losa en Hoy nos remite, como hipérbole, a la situación de nuestro mundo interconectado, en el que términos como inmediatez, velocidad y alienación son lugares comunes a la hora de pensar en cómo nos relacionamos con los dispositivos técnicos. Las imágenes de Hoy nos recuerdan el valor de los pequeños círculos de comunicación y las conversaciones privadas, reivindicando un uso íntimo de estos espacios virtuales.

En lugar de adoptar una posición a priori, Losa hace el ejercicio de poner en el mismo plano imagen fotográfica y capturas de pantalla, generando así un nuevo tipo de experiencia que aúna distintos sintagmas visuales. Explora las técnicas que utilizamos para comunicarnos y que transforman la manera en que organizamos, recordamos y visualizamos lo vivido.

En muchos de sus trabajos anteriores, la artista se apropia de vídeos familiares o postales compradas en mercadillos para construir sus propias narrativas. Así, no sólo los preserva para el futuro, sino también construye cierta versión del pasado. Aunque en su producción muestra un gran interés por el archivo, es en Hoy donde verdaderamente se ha contagiado de esa “enfermedad”, ya que utiliza el archivo fotográfico de su móvil como punto de partida para la investigación visual. Para ello, combina las imágenes que ha intercambiado durante el lapso de un año, las conversaciones con Lucía a través de Whatsapp y otras fotografías tomadas con su cámara.

Tratando los textos como imágenes, embebe estas conversaciones como recuadros dentro de sus fotografías. Esta combinación denota en la artista una gran intuición, no tomada sólo en su acepción clásica de inspiración o sensación, sino más bien como la entendía Bergson, como una forma de conocimiento a través de la práctica.

Presentar al mismo nivel estos dos registros es sintomático de cómo la artista está tomando en serio repensar lo fotográfico hoy, intentando ubicarse en un mundo donde la línea que separa los roles del productor y el consumidor de imágenes se difumina cada vez más.

La confusión también alcanza otros ámbitos, como el de la diferencia entre las dos dimensiones que pa- rece retratar, online y offline. Estas imágenes híbridas negocian una nueva materialidad, un nuevo ámbito de lo posible, el de un mundo donde las conversaciones de Whatsapp conviven como ventanas en una habitación, o donde los limones se confunden con emoticonos.

Eva Parra