In 2001 citizens were encouraged to take to the malls to boost the U.S.
economy through shopping, thereby equating consumerism with patriotism.
The Copia project, a direct response to that advice, is a long-term
photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated
culture in which we live. Through large scale photographs taken within both
the big-box retail stores, and the thrift shops that house our recycled
goods, Copia explores not only the everyday activities of shopping,
but the economic, cultural, social, and political implications of commercialism
and the roles we play in self-destruction, over consumption, and as targets
of marketing and advertising. By scrutinizing these rituals and their environments,
I hope that viewers will evaluate the increasing complexities of the modern
world and their role within it.
Since we ultimately see ourselves in these images, I aim to elicit compassion
and empathy for those depicted by creating formal images that are elegant
and beautiful. By combined photographs taken candidly with a medium-format
film camera outfitted with a waist-level viewfinder and available light,
and the large format studied compositions in thrift shops, I can capture
lost excitement and overwhelmed, subsumed moments. The large-scale prints
allow the viewer to stop and notice with a distanced perspective familiar
places and things. Over time these images take on new meaning, ones anthropological
and historical of an affluent society at the dawn of the 21st century. Our
experience and history of this time is evidenced in what we buy and what
we use up.
Copia 2002-2006 [view]