D I G I T A L E Y E Z E D

behind the scene

Paris / France · 2022

One of Paris’ most darling angles, Trocadéro plaza is popular with tourists who want a piece of the Eiffel tower to take home. And while there is no shortage of kitschy replicas being hawked all over the square at all but odd hours—and with little interruptions caused by police—today’s favorite souvenirs are photos.

When I lived in Paris, I always leaned against the average pull of these fridge-magnet-y tourist attractions, pretending that I wasn’t just a long-term tourist myself. But ultimately no way leads around these places, once you admit that the masses pilgrimage there for a reason. Why skip them in hypocritical protest? Protesting what? Beauty? Wonders? Amazement?

The scene captures a much larger picture beyond the frame: our withdrawal from the real world as we recede into a digital cave where we socialize, shop, work, date, consume, sow appearances and reap recognition.

To be sure, I have never been bored enough to take potshots at the Eiffel Tower from Trocadéro square, but the cosmoses unfolding in front of it have kept me fascinated and busy. Most people overlook them behind their clunky ambition to bring home undeniable proof of their Eiffel-Towerness and Parisianity. Maybe too few have seen grand Elliot Erwitt’s iconic Umbrella Jump photo, making the Eiffel Tower look rather unimportant, like an extra on a set where human emotion is front and center.

Following not his footsteps but his focus, my work D I G I T A L E Y E Z E D is not about the attraction itself but the attraction of the attraction. And while it is somewhat comical too, it is sad in at least equal measure: while Erwitt’s umbrella people were out there in the rain, living, the crowds in my shot seem like digital zombies, plugged into their phones and out of the moment. The scene captures a much larger picture beyond the frame: our withdrawal from the real world as we recede into a digital cave where we socialize, shop, work, date, consume, sow appearances and reap recognition.

It is fairly impossible to miss the societal critique my semi-humorous shot is laced with. But these days, I see that I missed something myself whenever I looked at it—a healthy side effect of our metastasizing digital keenness: a record of reality.

While Big Brother might be watching us, all we little brothers and sisters are watching right back. We are all witnesses now, keeping tyrants accountable (if there is such thing). We know what happened in Gaza even though no journalists were allowed in. We have footage of the Irani protests despite an internet shutdown. And we saw exactly what happened to Alex Pretti and Renee Good, no matter how much the administration is revving its propaganda machine.

Every phone pointed at the killings of these innocent Minnesota civilians is a wrench in the propaganda apparatus. And losing control over its grotesque domestic terrorism narrative so very obviously, the White House’s attempts at cattle herding almost border on something comical in their absurdity.

With an administration “pathologically incapable of self-criticism, admissions of failure, or condemnation of even its most unhinged henchmen” (from my latest essay “Another Tragedy MADE IN USA”), the only way to realign their political narratives with the realities our own eyes witness, is to fabricate frantic lies reminiscent of history’s most infamous propaganda regimes. Unsuccessfully so, however. Because—for better or worse—we are d i g i t a l e y e z e d.