Calling Home – Still Connected

Artist’s Statement: D J Wilson, LRPS

This photograph forms part of a continuing series exploring moments of visual and cultural juxtaposition in everyday life. Taken at a public cycling event, it captures a rider preparing for his ride on a vintage penny-farthing while absorbed in the glow of a smartphone — a collision of nineteenth-century engineering and twenty-first-century habit.

The image is not staged. It records a fleeting moment where history and modernity briefly coexist in a single gesture. While the penny-farthing evokes nostalgia, craftsmanship and physical presence, the mobile phone represents contemporary life’s constant pull toward the digital.

By placing these two worlds in the same frame, the photograph reflects how even the most traditional or eccentric spaces are now shaped by modern technology. It is a quiet, humorous reminder that progress does not replace the past — it simply overlays it.