Jacqueline Hassink : Unwired

Unwired combines two concurrent projects by Dutch photographer Jacqueline Hassink (born 1966), both of which address our increasingly digitally connected world. In Unwired Landscapes, she seeks out those few remaining places where it is still impossible to broadcast a network: remote areas like the Japanese island of Yakushima, the Norwegian group of islands Svalbard known as Spitsbergen or the uninhabitable volcanic desert of Iceland, or artificially created dead zones in urban spaces, such as a Digital Detox Hotel in Baden Baden. Her second project, iPortrait, seems to be the exact opposite of her first: it portrays people immersed in their smartphones in the subways of big cities such as New York, Paris, London, Moscow, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. Here, she reveals the other side of digital networking, showing how it intensifies alienation between people.