Week #1 Damon Casarez

This is the latest photograph in a series I have been working on for about a year called Observations. For the past year or so I have been keeping track of all of the strange, ridiculous, and dreary scenes I have seen while in public and later photographing them and tweaking what actually happened or shooting it exactly as I saw it. The photographs aim to have a documentary feel to them, as if I happened to have a camera and shoot these people and situations without the subject knowing. The series is meant to have an underlining message in each photograph or simply they act as documents of the phenomena of the situation.
This shot was a made up situation that I had imagined and photographed a couple weeks later after choosing props, wardrobe, location, casting a child actor and finalizing the shoot day and time. This photograph to me is just one example of how technology has infiltrated our daily lives and how our society is so obsessed with mobile devices. I imagined a child left alone in a shopping cart at a grocery store while the mother went to other aisles to grab more items while the video game acts as a baby sitter for the parent and child in this photo. This is the 3rd photograph in the series that has to do with mobile devices and how, when and where we use them in public and what their use has to say about our current society.