Tech dependency photo won National Geographic competition

At the last photo contest, National Geographic won the work of Brian Yen, who captured the girl in the wagon of the Hong Kong subway. Photography perfectly conveys the spirit of the times. The girl clearly falls out of the surrounding reality, completely immersed in the screen of the smartphone.

The title of the work “A Node Glowing in the Dark” (“A Node Glows in the Dark”) probably hints that a person with a smartphone connected to the Internet is nothing more than a node in the global information network. As in the film “Natural Born Killers”, the main character told a journalist that he is not a person for him, but only a node in an information distribution network, so modern homo sapiens are partially transformed into information objects, traffic consumption points.

“I feel a certain contradiction when I look at this photo,” said Yen in an interview with National Geographic. - On the one hand, I see technologies that grant freedom. On the other hand, there is a feeling that people no longer even try to be friendly with each other, because it is not necessary. ”
')
A picture of Jena taken in the subway near the station Ocean Park, where the light in the car is turned off, and monitors on the ceiling show animations related to marine life.

In total, 9289 works from photographers from more than 150 countries were submitted to the competition.

Photo Jena recalls a series of shots “The Death of a Talk” by London-based photographer Babicakes Romero (Babycakes Romero). An artist who does not use a smartphone publishes photos on his Twitter as people who are nearby do not pay attention to each other at all, but instead look at the screens of smartphones.