08 February 2010

Enough Already

1 comment:

  1. Enough Already. Although I have given it my own title: Conspicuous consumption. From Wikipedia:

    Conspicuous consumption is a term used to describe the lavish spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth. In the mind of a conspicuous consumer, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining social status. A very similar but more colloquial term is "keeping up with the Joneses".

    The bin groans with trash. It could all be recycled, it seems. But it isn’t. One carrier bag says ‘Bargains’ and what reads like ‘go on’. The irony is that this enthusiasm is completely throw-away and knee-jerk. Underneath the bag is what looks like something that shouldn’t be disposable but is – some kind of electronic device.

    Stylistically, it has the beautiful black diagonal which is often a feature of your work – the bin lid. It is interesting that you position the foreground before the architectural part of the house ‘on stilts’. It shows that the kind of ephemeral nature of trash collecting goes further into our familiar domains (the bin is on wheels as well – it’s sort of a shared imagery). The cardboard at the forefront of the image leads the viewer into the garbage, into the heart of emptiness… A sort of perspective-based directing of the gaze…

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