With technological innovation jobs get reassigned: jobs done by factory workers get reassigned to robots, the job of checking people out at the grocery store gets reassigned to self-checkout stations. Jobs performed by old technology get reassigned to new technology.
In the past a public pay phone was essential. This technology allowed stranded motorists to call for help, lost persons to call for directions, the late worker to phone home and let family know he/she might be late for supper. In the last decade or so the job of providing this communication has been reassigned to mobile phones. Since most people have a mobile phone there is hardly a need for the pay phone. This shift however has left a trail of abandoned pay phones in its wake.
In an oftentimes-whimsical state of deterioration, the abandoned pay phone carcass remains; phone line disconnected and money box emptied long ago. On the walls of gas stations, at the edges of shopping centers, around the perimeters of parking lots with cement posts anchoring them into the ground, these pay phones are hanging on as a barely-noticeable reminder of old technology.
The images for this on-going project are made with my cell phone. The irony is fitting and camera phone optics have improved enough for me to make images that can be printed and exhibited. I photograph these abandoned pay phones wherever and whenever I find them. My intention is to document as many as I can and present them in such a way that my viewers will be surprised at just how many there are while finding humor in the way they are wasting away. I also hope to raise the question of responsibility that should be taken when things, ideas, objects, etc. get reassigned to more modern, flashy, pretty, shiny technology. The presentation of this aspect of the work is as one piece hung in a gigantic grid with individual images of the pay phones making up the cells.
