WISH YOU WERE HERE

Wish You Were Here is an ongoing series photographed inside the National Gallery in London. It shows visitors looking at their phones while surrounded by paintings made across centuries. A small screen in someone’s hand can become the brightest thing in the frame, while the room around them remains full of images asking for their attention.

I began the project because I recognised the impulse in myself. I’ve stood in front of something remarkable and reached for my phone before taking the time to look. Sometimes we want to save an experience or share it with someone. Sometimes we simply follow a habit. From a photograph, I can’t know what has drawn a person to their screen, and that uncertainty is part of the work.

The National Gallery is an interesting place to explore this tension. Its paintings hold stories of love, loss, power, faith and ordinary life, yet visitors bring the pace and demands of the present into every room. My photographs catch a brief meeting between those two worlds.

There is a contradiction in making pictures about attention. I’m using a camera to notice people who may be using their phones to do the same. Wish You Were Here sits with that contradiction. It asks how we choose what to look at, what we hope to keep, and what happens around us while our attention is elsewhere.