In an increasingly online world, artist Matthew Pillsbury's Screen Lives project feels old-fashioned: He creates large, black-and-white photographs using an 8x10 camera -- the original high-def imaging device. He takes long exposures (often an hour or two) of people working with computers, using handheld electronic devices or watching television. Shot at night, and lit solely with ambient light, the resulting images are eerie landscapes and interiors where screens glow solid white and objects emerge clearly, while human figures are little more than ghostly blurs, rendered almost invisible by their movements. Reminiscent of early photographic attempts to capture paranormal phenomena, the series suggests that bodies are merely shadows cast by the light of electronic screens.  In acknowledging the fluid, ephemeral nature of human existence, Pillsbury's photographs leave room for possibilities that escape mechanical documentation. They are dispassionate, but they do not despair: Life may feel insubstantial in the glow of omnipresent screens, but it is still mysterious and unpredictable.                                                                              (from wired.com)

Matthew Pillsbury was the winner of the 2007 HSBC Foundation for Photography Prize.