SAMPLES SERIES

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The SAMPLES series (2003) combine unaltered advertising images and documentary photographs to mine the symbolic terrain of advertising and mass media and set these public languages against a radically different kind of imagery. These digital collages investigate how public images deploy explicit and implicit political content and structure the polity’s conception of civic life. They draw from some of the most prominent images in our culture. For example, Target comments on gentrification, Altoids comments on hate crimes, and Fox TV comments on funding federal intelligence. Advertising images also capitalize on and manipulate private fantasies and fears, translating empire into lifestyle (Kenneth Cole), social work into bathroom tile (Ann Sacks), and conflict diamonds into intimacy (De Beers). The SAMPLES expose how the mass media colludes in cultural backlash and how mediated images are enmeshed within the fabric of daily life.