In the Hooghly district of West Bengal, just a short walk from his home, photographer Soumayan Biswas found himself circling the edges of a\u00a0large village pond, searching \u2013 as he often does \u2013 for \u201cstories\u201d. He remembers that the weather was \u201ccloudy that day, and the wind was light\u201d. It was the kind of muted afternoon when your attention is sharpened.<\/p>\n
The story appeared in the form of Sabana, a 12-year-old student lying beside a tangle of fishing nets. Biswas had never met her before and, while spending some time around her, was struck by how absorbed she was in her phone.<\/p>\n
The mask-like pose was Sabana\u2019s idea. \u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t know the origin of the eyes image; whether it was something she had created herself, downloaded or found online,\u201d Biswas says, adding that he was more interested in how it worked to create \u201ca visual relationship between the child and the digital screen\u201d. One of Sabana\u2019s hands is painted with nail polish, the other bare\u00a0\u2013 a small asymmetry that mirrors the duality of the physical world and\u00a0the\u00a0one in which she\u2019s immersed.<\/p>\n
Although Biswas stresses that the photograph is not a statement about Sabana personally being \u201caddicted\u201d to her phone, he says: \u201cKnowingly or otherwise, mobile phones have created a different world in the lives of children \u2013 it is very difficult for them to avoid that temptation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Hooghly district of West Bengal, just a short walk from his home, photographer Soumayan Biswas found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-536235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}