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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Thirty Six: Adding or subtracting context to clarify or extend meaning > Wired, San Francisco, California, 2007
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07-JUN-2007

Wired, San Francisco, California, 2007

Hundreds of Bay Area Rapid Transit commuters enter San Francisco by passing next to an illuminated iPod ad. Few seem to notice it. This man has his own electronic preoccupation – a cell phone. This image comments on the nature of the increasingly wired population. The person is the subject, while the ad acts as context. The people in the following image http://www.pbase.com/pnd1/image/80827423) also use the ad as context, but with an entirely different result.

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Phil Douglis24-Jun-2007 19:09
Yes, it is a study in contrasts. The most expressive images relate elements that are similar and also different. Both subjects here are wired, and both are human in form. Yet as you point out, the image also offeers light vs dark, motion vs static, large vs. small, and even a contrast in direction.
monique jansen24-Jun-2007 12:20
He is oblivious to the intensely bright poster. Also a study in contrasts - light versus darnk, motion versus static.
Phil Douglis21-Jun-2007 21:18
You take this image to another level, Ceci, with this comment. I did not think of the ethnic and cultural implications when I made it, but now that you mention them, the photograph acquires additional meaning.
Guest 21-Jun-2007 18:12
This is way cool, life imitating art, or vice versa. It personifies our younger generation that is so wired, and the fact that their being wired is such a natural extension of their lives. I love the vibrant orange of the poster, how it illuminates and invigorates this picture, and even the bird-dropped diagonal rocks add to the feeling in this picture. The I-pod dancing youth, suggestive of African rythym and tribal movement, and the African American youth so animatedly talking on his cell phone, seem to speak of origins that are in the recent past.
Phil Douglis20-Jun-2007 17:48
Yes -- the poster is an abstraction, a symbol of entertanment. The subject -- the man on the phone -- turns his back on it. He has his own priorities.
flowsnow20-Jun-2007 15:21
Another one of my favourite type of shots where there is a similarity description of the "abstract" and the subject.
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