Down Time

As a city girl, my typical day begins with snoozing 13 alarms on my phone. The first thing I do when my feet hit the ground is scroll through my feed on social media, only to realize that not much has changed on the cloud in the last 7 hours. While I’m getting dressed, the gears in my brain start spinning as I make a mental checklist of the things I need to do — when it hits me that I have one in the Notes app of my phone. I finally scramble out the door and sit in the bus to get to class. As I am knee deep in my Instagram feed from 4 days ago, I wonder, ‘If only there was a way to measure the miles my fingers have scrolled’.

The past few months I spent my time in Hong Kong, roaming the streets, soaking in its culture and diversity. One thing that stood out within the busy and bustling pearl of the east, was the manner in which technology has taken over our lives. No more candid small talk in MTRs, no one mustering up the courage to ask for directions to a complete stranger, no more awkward eye-contact with pedestrians. Everyone was just plugged in, staring at a glorified metal brick that holds the entire world within them.

These observations and emotions inspired the black and white series, ‘Down Time’. The title is intentionally ironic, as it features the manner in which people spend their own down time looking down at their phones. The photographs drown out the hustle of the city, focusing mainly on characters in the Kowloon and Central area. The use of shallow depth and monotone dramatizes the instances of the action, emphasizing the remissness of the individual. As a student of animation, the process incited within me an interest in varied personalities and how each stood out even when doing the same thing. Each photograph could be read as a different story due to what the subject could be looking at - different worlds trapped, yet expanding within that 6 inch back-lit glass.

March 2018