Erasmus

Interacting with Nature

digital photographs

What started like a playful experiment for me to change the physical feeling of interacting with my phone during quarantine, grew in a curious photographic project. The recognizable pose of the hands of a smartphone user “scrolling” through social media on the images meets a surprising object of natural form and texture. It looks strange, if not satirical even, to see such intimate interaction with nature materials in the context of a banal technological device experience. One that contemporary people have with their phone on a daily basis and is considered a necessity. In urban areas the presence and use of mobile phones and technology is performed much more often than any tactile experience with nature. The images also recall a child play using stones and earth materials to represent objects, unavailable to children, who nevertheless treat them with the seriousness and ceremoniality of the “represented” ones. There is a moment of wonder before the associations of the poses and the new material meet and co-create new questions about connectivity, humanity and our attachment to social media and smartphones.