‘Removed’: A Photographer Captures the Isolation Effect of Cellphones

Are you reading this on a handheld device? There’s a good chance you are. Now imagine how’d you look if that device suddenly disappeared. Lonely? Slightly crazy? Perhaps standing next to a person being ignored?

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As we’re sucked in ever more by the screens we carry around, even in the company of friends and family, the hunched pose of the phone-absorbed seems increasingly normal. So the American photographer Eric Pickersgill created “Removed,” a series of photos that remind viewers how strange that pose actually is.

In each portrait, electronic devices have been edited out so that people stare at their hands, or the empty space between their hands, often ignoring beautiful surroundings or opportunities for human connection. The results are a bit sad and eerie—and a reminder, perhaps, to put our phones away.

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