ARTIST STATEMENT:

Photography is as much the subject of my work as it is the medium in which I work. I employ traditional photographic techniques and methods of appropriation, extraction, multiple production, and intervention, to explore how we, as a culture, make and use images.

My focus on collective practices in photography has led me to examine subjects that are collectively photographed. I take the sheer quantity of images online as a collective archive that represents us - a constantly changing auto-portrait. I view all visual expression within this collectively emergent environment as potential for social signs that hint at something other than what they depict. The work is an accumulation that navigates between consumer and producer, materiality and immateriality, and individual and collective expression.

The idea of absence and erasure is a constant theme in my work, especially with regard to the popular uses of technologies in photography and on the Internet that seem to promise visibility, community and intimacy. I question the idea of the democratization of media, where pre-scripted images, made with tools programmed to function in predetermined ways, claim to foster subjectivity and individuality.

In much of my work I address how differently an image functions on the internet than in physical time/space, the shifts in meaning around the subject depicted in the image in both contexts, and what happens to the image's perceived value when transcribed from web-based to print-based media.

I have begun to see some of the objects pictured in the images I find as the aftermath and by-products of Modernism. These images register the disparity between an optimistic Modernism (the seduction of clean emptied space; promises of efficiency and productivity; the mass-production and availability of everything) and the dystopic result (technological breakdown, ecological disaster, social alienation).

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Photography is as much the subject of my work as it is the medium in which I work. I employ traditional photographic techniques and methods of appropriation, extraction, multiple production, and intervention, to explore how we, as a culture, make and use images.

My focus on collective practices in photography has led me to examine subjects that are collectively photographed. I take the sheer quantity of images online as a collective archive that represents us - a constantly changing auto-portrait. I view all visual expression within this collectively emergent environment as potential for social signs that hint at something other than what they depict. The work is an accumulation that navigates between consumer and producer, materiality and immateriality, and individual and collective expression.

The idea of absence and erasure is a constant theme in my work, especially with regard to the popular uses of technologies in photography and on the Internet that seem to promise visibility, community and intimacy. I question the idea of the democratization of media, where pre-scripted images, made with tools programmed to function in predetermined ways, claim to foster subjectivity and individuality.

In much of my work I address how differently an image functions on the internet than in physical time/space, the shifts in meaning around the subject depicted in the image in both contexts, and what happens to the image's perceived value when transcribed from web-based to print-based media.

I have begun to see some of the objects pictured in the images I find as the aftermath and by-products of Modernism. These images register the disparity between an optimistic Modernism (the seduction of clean emptied space; promises of efficiency and productivity; the mass-production and availability of everything) and the dystopic result (technological breakdown, ecological disaster, social alienation).

Penelope Umbrico MIRRORS

CROWD SOURCING

The “Mirrors (from Catalogs and Home Décor Websites)”, are taken directly from mail-order catalogs and brochures displaying idealized room suites.

The Artists States in her recent catalog on this series: “I scanned or downloaded the images, isolated the mirrors from their surroundings, and digitally skewed them to correct for perspective. I then enlarged the images to the dimensions of the actual size of the mirror being sold on the site, or in the catalog (hence the noticeable pixel or dot screen pattern visible from the original source), and mounted them face forward to non-glare laser-cut plexi-glass. In this new form, they are sculptures of mirrors, hung on the wall as though they are actual mirrors. While the mirrors in home decor catalogs and websites serve to locate the viewer within the space by reflecting what would be behind him/her, all the seductive trappings arranged in mirror’s reflection become surrogates for the missing reflection of the viewer - the viewer witnesses his/her own disappearance and replacement by sellable objects.”

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Photography is as much the subject of my work as it is the medium in which I work. I employ traditional photographic techniques and methods of appropriation, extraction, multiple production, and intervention, to explore how we, as a culture, make and use images.

My focus on collective practices in photography has led me to examine subjects that are collectively photographed. I take the sheer quantity of images online as a collective archive that represents us - a constantly changing auto-portrait. I view all visual expression within this collectively emergent environment as potential for social signs that hint at something other than what they depict. The work is an accumulation that navigates between consumer and producer, materiality and immateriality, and individual and collective expression.

The idea of absence and erasure is a constant theme in my work, especially with regard to the popular uses of technologies in photography and on the Internet that seem to promise visibility, community and intimacy. I question the idea of the democratization of media, where pre-scripted images, made with tools programmed to function in predetermined ways, claim to foster subjectivity and individuality.

In much of my work I address how differently an image functions on the internet than in physical time/space, the shifts in meaning around the subject depicted in the image in both contexts, and what happens to the image's perceived value when transcribed from web-based to print-based media.

I have begun to see some of the objects pictured in the images I find as the aftermath and by-products of Modernism. These images register the disparity between an optimistic Modernism (the seduction of clean emptied space; promises of efficiency and productivity; the mass-production and availability of everything) and the dystopic result (technological breakdown, ecological disaster, social alienation).

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Photography is as much the subject of my work as it is the medium in which I work. I employ traditional photographic techniques and methods of appropriation, extraction, multiple production, and intervention, to explore how we, as a culture, make and use images.

My focus on collective practices in photography has led me to examine subjects that are collectively photographed. I take the sheer quantity of images online as a collective archive that represents us - a constantly changing auto-portrait. I view all visual expression within this collectively emergent environment as potential for social signs that hint at something other than what they depict. The work is an accumulation that navigates between consumer and producer, materiality and immateriality, and individual and collective expression.

The idea of absence and erasure is a constant theme in my work, especially with regard to the popular uses of technologies in photography and on the Internet that seem to promise visibility, community and intimacy. I question the idea of the democratization of media, where pre-scripted images, made with tools programmed to function in predetermined ways, claim to foster subjectivity and individuality.

In much of my work I address how differently an image functions on the internet than in physical time/space, the shifts in meaning around the subject depicted in the image in both contexts, and what happens to the image's perceived value when transcribed from web-based to print-based media.

I have begun to see some of the objects pictured in the images I find as the aftermath and by-products of Modernism. These images register the disparity between an optimistic Modernism (the seduction of clean emptied space; promises of efficiency and productivity; the mass-production and availability of everything) and the dystopic result (technological breakdown, ecological disaster, social alienation).

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Photography is as much the subject of my work as it is the medium in which I work. I employ traditional photographic techniques and methods of appropriation, extraction, multiple production, and intervention, to explore how we, as a culture, make and use images.

My focus on collective practices in photography has led me to examine subjects that are collectively photographed. I take the sheer quantity of images online as a collective archive that represents us - a constantly changing auto-portrait. I view all visual expression within this collectively emergent environment as potential for social signs that hint at something other than what they depict. The work is an accumulation that navigates between consumer and producer, materiality and immateriality, and individual and collective expression.

The idea of absence and erasure is a constant theme in my work, especially with regard to the popular uses of technologies in photography and on the Internet that seem to promise visibility, community and intimacy. I question the idea of the democratization of media, where pre-scripted images, made with tools programmed to function in predetermined ways, claim to foster subjectivity and individuality.

In much of my work I address how differently an image functions on the internet than in physical time/space, the shifts in meaning around the subject depicted in the image in both contexts, and what happens to the image's perceived value when transcribed from web-based to print-based media.

I have begun to see some of the objects pictured in the images I find as the aftermath and by-products of Modernism. These images register the disparity between an optimistic Modernism (the seduction of clean emptied space; promises of efficiency and productivity; the mass-production and availability of everything) and the dystopic result (technological breakdown, ecological disaster, social alienation).

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Photography is as much the subject of my work as it is the medium in which I work. I employ traditional photographic techniques and methods of appropriation, extraction, multiple production, and intervention, to explore how we, as a culture, make and use images.

My focus on collective practices in photography has led me to examine subjects that are collectively photographed. I take the sheer quantity of images online as a collective archive that represents us - a constantly changing auto-portrait. I view all visual expression within this collectively emergent environment as potential for social signs that hint at something other than what they depict. The work is an accumulation that navigates between consumer and producer, materiality and immateriality, and individual and collective expression.

The idea of absence and erasure is a constant theme in my work, especially with regard to the popular uses of technologies in photography and on the Internet that seem to promise visibility, community and intimacy. I question the idea of the democratization of media, where pre-scripted images, made with tools programmed to function in predetermined ways, claim to foster subjectivity and individuality.

In much of my work I address how differently an image functions on the internet than in physical time/space, the shifts in meaning around the subject depicted in the image in both contexts, and what happens to the image's perceived value when transcribed from web-based to print-based media.

I have begun to see some of the objects pictured in the images I find as the aftermath and by-products of Modernism. These images register the disparity between an optimistic Modernism (the seduction of clean emptied space; promises of efficiency and productivity; the mass-production and availability of everything) and the dystopic result (technological breakdown, ecological disaster, social alienation).