Technostalgia

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #90, 1981

It's always interesting to think about embedded objects in photography or film as a chronicle of technology. Here Cindy's lonely character waits for the phone to ring to resolve her emotional dilemma. It's a prop, but the only one that existed in 1981. Loneliness now inhabits the world of the smartphone, and I must admit would be less interesting in this tableau. Imagine that in another 20 or 30 years, there would be no visible device to cling to for that same emotional frame: She'd be staring into space.