Using found imagery, I visually analyze social rules, hidden messages, the psychology behind these ideas, and how they may alter our behavior. Over the years, I have amassed an archive of images that provide examples of how we should live and what we should desire if we want to be perceived as successful, beautiful, and most importantly, acceptable. I select specific images and isolate them from their context. This act deconstructs the commercial message, providing an ambiguous space in which the viewer's own perceptions, memories, and opinions may create new meaning and symbolism. My work invites the viewer to consider the cultural expectations of social status, gender roles, age, race, morality, tradition, and sexuality.
My work explores culturally accepted and media supported perceptions.
This sociological work is a manifestation of my own experience. I grew up in a relatively standard, pre-internet, blue collar American household inundated with commercial images that were delivered though the TV and local newspaper. These pictures symbolized “the better life” and “how it should be”. Since the development of the world wide web and the proliferation of advertising into every nook and cranny of our daily lives, we now receive far more visual information than ever before. It is through this barrage that we receive cues, as a society, about what is acceptable and what is not. I am intrigued by how these pictures, while commercial in nature, can manipulate us culturally.
