Watching you

The prolific use of mobile phones, cameras, CCTV, and the internet has ensured that we are never alone or unwatched, and that each of us is cast as unwitting voyeurs ourselves. Dramatic as it may sound, we increasingly live in a Big Brother society where every move is watched and charted, in, for the most part, of the interest of “safety. You talk about private life? You are people from the past. As Philip K Dick wrote (Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations): "There are no private lives. This is the most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.” On the other hand in everyday encounters the two pervasive sources of social information are faces and hands. They reflect our souls, our past and present. Hands reveal as much about a person as the face. Combing them not into a single photograph but as a diptych enables an even more profound source of information. At the end, am I watching you, or are you watching me, or is someone else you don’t even see watching you?