Two of our most despicable and disgusting fixations!
By Dr. K. Javed Nayeem, MD
Very recently, Stephen Shore, the celebrated American photographer, who through his photography, depicted life in American cities, especially during the sixties and seventies, is said to have abruptly stopped his lecture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and walked out of the hall. He did this because he felt appalled and deeply disgusted by the number of people in the audience, who were constantly peering into their mobile phones even as he was speaking.
And, Stephen Shore is no ordinary man. Born in 1947, Shore travelled the length and breadth of the United States from 1973 to 1979 in a series of road trips during which he made hundreds of images with his unique theme called the ‘American Main Street.’ He made it his mission to capture even the ordinary moments in American life, rather than only the dramatic events, which are captured and depicted by most other photographers.
And, his photographs of ordinary American life have won him much acclaim across the world and they have been much sought after as documentary evidence of the way America was then. Most prints of his work still continue to sell for anything between 5,000 and 10,000 US dollars each.
More than anything else, he has the unique distinction of being awarded a solo exhibition at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1971 and he is the first living photographer who has the privilege of being given this opportunity, while still alive. All the others until then, had been bestowed by this honour only posthumously.
Just before walking out, Shore is said to have questioned the logic of an audience that voluntarily chose to come to a lecture, only to focus their entire attention on their mobile phones. He very calmly said to the audience, “Since we are talking about attention, I think we understand each other. But I saw dozens of you who spent the entire lecture looking at your phones. You’ve come here to hear a talk and you can’t even pay attention to whom you’ve come to listen to. How can you then pay attention to what you are eating or feel and relish the warmth of the sunlight on your skin?”
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