‘It’s difficult for children to avoid the temptation of screens’: Soumayan Biswas’s best phone picture | Photography

In the Hooghly district of West Bengal, just a short walk from his home, photographer Soumayan Biswas found himself circling the edges of a large village pond, searching – as he often does – for “stories”. He remembers that the weather was “cloudy that day, and the wind was light”. It was the kind of muted afternoon when your attention is sharpened.

The story appeared in the form of Sabana, a 12-year-old student lying beside a tangle of fishing nets. Biswas had never met her before and, while spending some time around her, was struck by how absorbed she was in her phone.

The mask-like pose was Sabana’s idea. “I don’t know the origin of the eyes image; whether it was something she had created herself, downloaded or found online,” Biswas says, adding that he was more interested in how it worked to create “a visual relationship between the child and the digital screen”. One of Sabana’s hands is painted with nail polish, the other bare – a small asymmetry that mirrors the duality of the physical world and the one in which she’s immersed.

Although Biswas stresses that the photograph is not a statement about Sabana personally being “addicted” to her phone, he says: “Knowingly or otherwise, mobile phones have created a different world in the lives of children – it is very difficult for them to avoid that temptation.”