Google’s Magic Eraser is like a top assassin.  It wipes out people.  It is The Jackal of mobile phone apps.  But I have no need of it.  I do its job for it.

Where Google’s Magic Eraser will remove extraneous people from digital photographs, I achieve the same result through sheer dogged patience.  Stand long enough and it is possible to capture any scene people-free.

Almost all of my photographs are devoid of people.  Face-free zones.  Lonely planet.  Quite deliberately.  Only-child syndrome.  I don’t want anyone else to share my space.  Physical or digital.  Even in the most crowded scenes and landscapes, I am prepared to wait it out to make it appear in my photographed record of reality that the event was experienced alone.  My photographs make it seem as though I walk through a world subject to a constant Covid-lockdown.

I used to wonder if this desire for exclusivity was somewhat unhealthy but, surely, if an app exists to achieve the same end result, I am not alone in this desire to be perceived as an individual?

Although the very idea of being not alone in something makes me feel rather uneasy again.

© Simon Turner-Tree

Simon Turner-Tree checks out if he is all alone.