![]() The first (and probably most popular way) to show a text message exchange is to shoot the phone itself. And, as art imitates life, text messages have made their way into films and TV, which presents a problem for filmmakers - how to show a text message exchange in a way that doesn’t bore the audience. Now that our phones are full of robocalls, text messages are one of the main ways people communicate. “When I’m taking a picture, I’m unconsciously editing these anonymous words.Explore the pros and cons of three common approaches to on-screen text message exchanges. But then, in the in-progress box at the bottom, a more plaintive and vulnerable line emerges: “U never wanted me.” Will it ever be sent? “I’m trying to shape a text, and in that sense it’s a bit like poetry,” Mermelstein told me. “I hate you and I’m glad I’m doing it lol tell whoever u want cause it’s to fucking late,” a texter writes, the bellicose message’s darker hue and right-hand location on the screen indicating its “sent” status. This is the kind of thing that ushers some of Mermelstein’s images into the realm of poetry. There is an unexpected poignance, too, to text that has not yet been sent, still available for revision or, perhaps, deletion. They create a landscape within which even minute shifts make for a big difference, whether it’s the graphic drama of those three chubby dots that indicate a text in progress, a wholesome and yet somehow ominous symbol, or the particular choice of emoji, of upper or lowercase letters, of a period or an exclamation mark. Regardless of their concrete meanings, the conversational back-and-forths on the screens’ lit-up canvasses-each missive contained within the round-edged rectangles of iMessage, or, occasionally, Whatsapp-are visual signs. There is also, in many of them, the careful attention to formal arrangement that one might find in abstract art. In “#nyc,” he is making a new version of Weegee’s “Naked City”: people’s misdeeds and misfortunes, indulgences and vulnerabilities, are revealed not through their flash-lit bodies and faces but in the documenting of the data that they exchange on their glowing handheld devices.īut, as I continued to look at Mermelstein’s photos, I realized that a fascination with plot is just part of why they are so affecting. As a street photographer, I’ve been practicing this for a long time, and I trust that what I do isn’t hurting anyone.” In a way, Mermelstein has reworked the great tradition of twentieth-century street photography for our contemporary era. “We’re all out there in the public domain, so part of everything we do engages with voyeurism. “Voyeuristic isn’t the same as harmful,” Mermelstein told me, when I asked him about the ethics of capturing people’s private thoughts without their knowledge or consent. As I read along, I became enmeshed in the texts, in the same way that one is when reading a diary without its writer’s knowledge-the world outside melting away as, breathless and a little ashamed, one wishes to learn just a bit more about another’s secret history. I am in shock.” All, however, make for gripping plots, or at least the beginning of ones. ‘0852’ ”-to melodramatic-“I don’t think any of us ever thought the day would ever come for an admission of this kind. I asked the young lady if I could use the restroom if I purchased a banana. I AM SO SAD AND FEELING HELPLESS”-to horny-“I want to fuck my trainer…”-to comical-“I had a nice pee in a Starbucks. Tonally, the texts in Mermelstein’s pictures range widely, from tragic-“IF I COULD I WOULD DO ANYTHING TO SAVE YOU. ![]() The experience of leafing through “#nyc” was atypical for a photography book: my enjoyment in looking, at least at first, was more readerly than visual. It was just a couple of lines there, but I suddenly felt, This could be the germ of a short story. “She was doing a Google search, and it was something about wills, and a line came up about finding six thousand dollars in an attic. “I noticed that a woman was sitting there, tapping something out on her phone.” Operating on half-conscious instinct, as he often does when photographing, Mermelstein raised his own phone, went up to the woman, and took a picture, focussing not on her, as he might usually have done, but on the screen of her device. “It was somewhere around Eighth Avenue and the mid-Forties,” Mermelstein told me from his home in Brooklyn, when I called him the other day. ![]() In October of 2017, the photographer Jeff Mermelstein, who has been taking pictures of New York City street life since the early nineteen-eighties, was walking in midtown, on one of his near-daily shooting expeditions, when he encountered something he had never thought to capture before. ![]()
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