Review
Dafydd Jones focuses on one of the most dominant elements of the social life of our times – how the smartphone has taken over. A timely and sobering look at this phenomenon, it is done with his usual eloquence as a photographer. -- Martin Parr
Snapped in secret, the phone-mad stars: From a VERY glamorous Geri Halliwell to rocker Ronnie Wood and actress Naomie Harris, photographer Dafydd Jones reveals celebrities' mania for mobiles in a stunning new book. Taken over the past ten years, each subject is mesmerized by his or her smartphone to the exclusion of all around them. Included in the pictures are Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, model Natalia Vodianova and Brazilian Ana Araujo with her now ex-boyfriend, Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood. 'I started taking pictures of celebrities at social occasions when they were staring at their phones rather than looking at each other, which is what they should be doing,' Jones tells me. 'In every social situation the smartphone is not only killing conversation, it's changing the way we look at the world.'Who knows what impact it's having in the bedroom?' -- Sebastian Shakespeare ― MailOnline, 11 October 2019
About the Author
Dafydd Jones (b. 1956) is one of the world's leading social photographers. He decided to become a photographer while studying fine art at university. In 1981 he entered a set of pictures of 'Bright Young Things' in a photography competition run by the Sunday Times Magazine, and was awarded a prize. As a result, he was hired by Tina Brown to photograph balls, debutante dances and weddings for the Tatler. He moved to New York in 1989 - a move helped by generous editors. While there, he worked for the New York Observer, producing feature and news-related pictures, and covered celebrity and society events for Vanity Fair. For his own enjoyment, he also took all the pictures for one issue about New York for Paper magazine. He came back to England in 1996, having watched London becoming 'the center of the cultural world and the place I wanted to be'. Since returning to London he has had slots in most of the broadsheet newspapers, including the Independent, the Times, and the Sunday Telegraph. His work is held in the collections of: the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Hyman Collection of British Photography, London; the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol; the Opsis Foundation, New York; and the Yale Museum of British Art. An exhibition of his work from the 1980s, 'Dafydd Jones: The Last Hurrah', was held at The Photographers' Gallery, London, from August to September 2018.
