The advent of smartphones has conditioned new reflexes and created a new, unsettling gestural vocabulary that evokes a near-mystical posture. A direct reference to the work of Abraham Moles on the philosophy of centrality, ME. Here Now captures the specific moment when tourists take, with their smartphones, near-identical pictures of what is paradoxically a unique experience for them. Beyond the ritual of holiday pictures, these images—often instantly shared—create a new language, as with the certificate of presences by Roland Barthes or with the photograph-trophies by Susan Sontag. Vionnet's portraits of these nameless individuals, half-concealed behind smartphone screens, also underscore the omnipresence of surveillance in public areas and remind us that all of our wanderings may be photographed.
