As documented and narrated by Ashutosh Kumar.
The mobile phone has become an almost inseparable part of everyday life. It accompanies us while we travel, work, eat, rest, meet people, and even during moments that were once considered private or intimate. What began as a tool for communication and convenience has gradually become something much more deeply embedded in the way we experience the world.
Present / Elsewhere is an observational photographic project exploring our growing dependence on the mobile phone and the subtle ways it has changed human behavior. The project looks at people who are physically present in a place, among other people, yet mentally absorbed in another world held inside a small screen. Rather than treating phone use simply as a technological or social problem, the project observes it as an ordinary part of contemporary life.
Through photographs made in streets, workplaces, homes, public spaces, journeys, moments of leisure, family settings, and at night, the series examines how the phone has entered almost every aspect of our daily existence. Rendered in stark black and white, the visual sequence moves gradually from bright daylight into pitch darkness, opening with a visitor standing before the Taj Mahal yet experiencing it entirely through a glowing rectangle, and shifting to two young women sitting back-to-back, shoulders touching while their attention drifts into separate digital spaces.
The photographs focus on moments of contradiction: people together but psychologically distant, conversations interrupted by screens, solitary figures surrounded by others, and individuals reaching for their phones almost instinctively. Some images show obvious dependence, while others reveal it through quieter gestures and habits that have become so normal they often go unnoticed.
At its core, Present / Elsewhere is about the distance between where our bodies are and where our attention has gone. It questions whether constant connectivity is actually bringing us closer, or quietly teaching us to be somewhere else.
About Ashutosh: Ashutosh Kumar sees photography not simply as a way of documenting what exists, but as a means of paying attention. His practice is rooted in observing everyday life and the quiet details that often go unnoticed. Through photography, he explores the relationship between people, places, time, and the fragments of existence that surround us. He is drawn to ordinary situations, fleeting gestures, overlooked spaces, and moments that exist somewhere between presence and absence.