Sleepytown is a
series of photographs taken between 7 and 10am on a Tuesday morning on the
Lawrence campus and the surrounding area. The project attempts to counteract
Marshall McLuhan’s idea of “allatonceness” (63) and “a world of total
involvement in which everybody is so profoundly involved with everybody else”
(61), as well as address “the humanity of the moment” and the possibility of “a
genuine connection between individuals” (Greenough 187-188). As a society,
social media and the process of being constantly connected to each other
consumes us just as much as we consume it. The idea of this series was to ask
whether we could remove ourselves from the busyness of “allatonceness” and
reconnect to ourselves, to our physical surroundings, and to our in-person
relationships.
I tried to order the photos to reflect the idea of waking
up, creating a gradient from solitary to social, cold to warm, impersonal to
personal. These photos attempt to make the everyday more visible in an attempt
to capture “the humanity of the moment” and a heightened awareness of our
surroundings.
And while I think the
series achieves this progression in some ways, in others it seems to remain
disconnected and distant. Several photos in a row show students absorbed in
their phones, making them seem far away no matter where the camera is or what
tone the photo has. The final photo of two students at a table in the café is
the closest we get to a look at an in-person relationship, but they aren’t
looking at each other, and they’re not speaking. So in this age of extreme
technological connectedness, how connected are we really? We should be aware of
how our technological connectedness affects our human connectedness, and that “allatonceness”
doesn’t necessarily translate to awareness of the things around us and of the
world at large. So we have to consciously make the commitment to be present in
our lives; we have to continue to find “the humanity in the moment.”
Click here to view the photo set in Flickr. (Note: Start from the bottom up.)
I really like the progression of "cold to warm, impersonal to personal." It really creates an arc for your album and connects everything to each other. I think it's really interesting that your photos both refute and support the McLuhan quote- like you pointed out in your post, your photos are gradually getting more personal, but exactly how "personal" is personal in this technological world?
ReplyDeleteThe scenes of Lawrence students waking up are so familiar...they're comfortable. I really like how you capture that comfort as well as trying to get more and more personal in the relationships you represent with your photos. You did a great job of both illustrating your point and questioning it.
ReplyDeleteThe narrative of the morning progressing from barren college campus to slightly bustling college campus is pretty funny. I like how you captured a pretty boring and generally negative time of the day in a poetic kind of way.
ReplyDeleteYour photographs are full of great details and the ones of the off-campus locations are very painterly. They really do bring vibrancy to what one could simply write off as mundane. I believe that your on-campus photographs do a highlight a certain social connectedness between the people living and working there, that they all walk the same paths and share similar interests despite being in different fields or at different levels of understanding.
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