‘Massively creepy’: Photographer’s text message project divides opinion

In 2017 New York photographer Jeff Mermelstein was outside a cafe when he quietly snapped a picture of a woman searching Google on her phone.

She was clearly going through a sad time in her life. The woman was searching for information about wills –specifically about finding $6,000 in an attic and a father leaving no will.

“A list with [a] melancholy overtone that works as a short story,” as the photographer described it to Yahoo News Australia.

It sparked an idea.

For the following years, Mr Mermelstein surreptitiously photographed people crafting text messages on their phones as they went about their business. Without them noticing, he would steal a voyeuristic glimpse into their life by snapping the private conversation contained in the little digital bubbles on the phone’s screen.

In a way, it’s kind of like the hugely popular Humans of New York, but without the consent. From an artist’s point of view; completely unguarded.

Mr Mermelstein’s work is often personal, including haunting photos taken after the September 11 attacks. He has also shot on assignment for publications such as LIFE, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine.

His latest series of photos has been turned into a book called #nyc, but unsurprisingly the project has garnered some criticism for its intrusive nature.

‘The stripper texted me’

His subjects were not asked permission to have their photos taken, nor were they ever made aware of it. Many of the text conversations featured in the book show intimate moments between friends, or the complicated exchanges of budding romances.

In one, a person cheers on their friend’s promiscuity, with the friend confiding that “the stripper texted me”.

In another, a person is being delicately rejected by a potential love interest.

Meanwhile others are almost graphic, revealing sexual secrets.

“This seems massively creepy and invasive,” one Australian journalist wrote recently, reacting to the work online after the book was launched last month.

“This is super stalky,” another commented in agreement.

Mr Mermelstein says identifying information has been removed to ensure anonymity but many questioned whether that statement really holds up to scrutiny.

“It is shockingly irresponsible and extremely clumsy for a range of reasons,” one critic claimed on Twitter.

“But a kicker is the idea that simply removing names and numbers is enough. People can be de-identified by cross-referencing with other public data; pretty damn easily.”

Mr Mermelstein doesn’t seem fazed by the criticism. For him, it’s an exercise in modern anthropology and the limits of what street photography can do.

“Some oppose what I have done and claim an invasion of privacy while others very much enjoy the anthropological record and insight,” he told Yahoo News Australia.

Capturing the things that tie us together

Spending years capturing the text messages of New Yorkers has informed him about the nature of humans in 2020, he said.

“I hope that people take away, for now and in the future, a record and understanding of the human condition at a particular time and place,” he said.

“We humans are extraordinarily diverse however at the same time there is some kind of continuity that ties us together in this moment of madness in our history.”

Each text message – no matter how dull or indecipherable – tells a little story about that person, in that moment. And it’s often the more mysterious ones that linger in his mind and, he hopes, those who view his work.

“Quite a few continue to resonate,” Mr Mermelstein said.

“One, regarding a cantaloupe as a prize is a good example of one that has an inexplicable, mysterious, and absurd. Perhaps a secretly coded conversation, we’ll never know, and I still wonder what it’s all about.”

For a project that was born out of snooping on a person’s Google search, it’s somewhat ironic that those using the search engine don’t seem to have a high opinion of photographers.

When you type the words “photographers are...” into Google, the top two autofill suggestions are “not artists” and “annoying”. The third autofill suggestion is “creepy”.

Regardless of what you think of the #nyc collection, it’s unlikely to disabuse people of that particular notion.

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