Cyberspace Zombies

Behind the scenes at a recent fashion show I was present to make some photos of the girls getting their hair and makeup done. The scene was not your typical dressing room. The typical dressing room would have the models sitting in front of a makeup table with a large mirror and lots of clean white lights. This dressing room was an out of service basement bar. Makeup artists and hairstylists had to work in dimly lit corners or under a strange purplish-blue down light.

In the shoots that I organize, there is a lot of interaction between the model, makeup artist, hairstylist, and photographer – but that was not happening here. Everyone was in their own world working almost like robots. As I looked around the room I noticed something that is becoming more and more common in social gatherings – “cyberspace zombies”. People totally disengaged from their surroundings and totally engaged with their phone. People don’t talk anymore, they text. When people communicate in person, many times it is facilitated by their phone. “Hey look at this pic on my phone!” And then there is the ever present selfie. People are obsessed with taking photographs of themselves showing where they are and whom they are with. Life in cyberspace is about creating an image of how one fantasizes them self in the eyes of others.

These images are real world images of people engaged in their cyberspace lives. Their emotions, and lack of emotions, are testimony to their life as a cyberspace zombie.