Photographic documentation can turn automated screen absorption into a staged, noticed performance.

Evidence

In the early years of the smartphone, Pickersgill began to document the emergence of a new kind of para-social life: people together, where everyone was looking at their own personal screen. Everyone alive in those years saw and felt this change, but Pickersgill began to experiment with it. Using a little Southern charm, he started to introduce himself into such scenes, and to strike up conversations with strangers about what was happening. At that point, if things were going smoothly, he’d ask his new friends if they were up for being photographed, doing just what they were doing before—except pocketing their phones and tablets. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 370

Categorization

• XREF: The Removed series images are an accessible, shareable body of evidence for the book’s diagnosis of ‘evacuated co-presence.’ — connects to: Knowing a webcam broadcasts transforms bystanders into image-checking performers within minutes. — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 68