Open Theme nominee

PHANTOMS is a photographic commentary exploring how we're losing touch with one another as we depend more and more on social networks, texting, and e-mail to communicate. 
With all its glamour, sophistication and convenience, advances in technology are ultimately alienating each one of us on a personal level. Instead of promoting real human interaction, the converse is taking place.
We're becoming anxious, isolated, anti-social, lonely, depressed and yes, mere 'phantoms' cut-off from others.
Instead of speaking face-to-face or even voice-to-voice, we're coexisting in space without really seeing or knowing one another. We're living in a netherworld...neither here nor there...rarely present. It's as if we're evaporating into another dimension as we yearn for a simpler, more peaceful past.

Meryl Spiegel has exhibited widely throughout the East End of Long Island at a variety of venues including Parrish Art Museum, Art Sites, Alex Ferrone Photography Gallery, St. Joseph’s College, Ashawagh Hall, Levitas Center, WHBPAC Gallery, and East End Arts Council where she was awarded “Best in Show.”
Her photo essays have appeared in The Southampton Review published by Stony Brook University. She has also received several grants from NYFA, the New York Foundation for the Arts, including being chosen to participate in the highly selective MARK program.
Ms Spiegel teaches photography at the East End Arts Council in Riverhead New York where she focuses on composition, light and color. She studied photography at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and the Center for Media Studies, both in Manhattan as well as the Image-Ouverte School of Photography in the South of France.