Christmas Cheer
So, Christmas was fun. I hope you all had a great time. It was lovely to spend some much needed time with the family back home and declutter my brain.
As you may or may not already know, I think greetings cards are an abomination of an industry, built solely on the guilt and gullibility of the public. With that in mind, I’ve never publicly attacked Christmas crackers, despite a keen hatred for those too. So here it is.
I have no real problem with materialism in a sense. We feel a primal connection with ‘stuff’, and some of that ‘stuff’ in this day and age is almost integral to our happiness. But then there is other ‘stuff’, ‘stuff’ that we have no need or indeed want for, but are goaded in to purchasing on the basis of falsified traditions and notions of a good time. Is it really worth the cost to anybody, from the environment to the consumer, to buy a box of pretty, useless paper with atrociously nonsensical ‘toys’, ridiculous ‘hats’, and a moronic ‘joke’ from the middle ages in it? Can’t we just enjoy time with the loved ones without bending over and selling the last shreds of our dignity to the people who are so adept at taking it?
I took a short series of photographs. A series to shine light on what you’re physically paying money for, despite that it is essentially the end result of some ludicrous, yet thankfully short, display of domestic loudness. The dark void of these images is designed to separate the object from the event, to put it up for scrutiny and to symbolise its last resting place, since not only will these artefacts be committed to the bin before Christmas Day is even over, but that they should never have warranted the oil wasted on its production in the first place.
I’ve not been able to find exact figures, but it seems over one hundred million of these pointless endeavours is manufactured each year.
Try to have fun responsibly, like getting really, really drunk and playing boardgames.
Merry (belated) Christmas (by tradition, not religion).
Cynic. I do have to agree with the sentiment though, especially as regards the waste / environmental considerations. I like the simplicity and the choice of the dark background, both for the reasons you mentioned and because it seems to emphasize the saturated colours and cheapness which is synonymous with this kind of disposable tat. Works nicely as a little series with or without the need for much text in my opinion. Now enjoy getting back to your wine
Kat’s said it all really.
I genuinely love these and have the pang of jealously in the pit of my gut which I get when I see work which I wish I’d made.
I don’t wanna bang on and sound like a kiss-ass, but I really don’t have much more to say, apart from I really dig it, and want to see an entire series. This feels like a taster which isn’t quite enough for me.
And yes, I agree with Kat that you really don’t need any text, or very little if you do.
Cheers guys, I’m glad it’s liked. I suppose it is cynical really, but I appear to be at an age now where all the things I’ve loved without question just seem to depress me. Some things just seem utterly, utterly pointless.
It’s funny, I find the pictures really alluring, the opposite to the point being made, but that sort of adds to it I reckon. We can be drawn to the stupidest of things with the smallest trickery.
As for a series, consider it in the works. I already have a few more artefacts, and as you *promised* earlier, you’ll get me a few more still
I always think a ‘project’ is in trouble when you can see the start and the end quite rigidly, but maybe I should start telling myself that this is the start of something else, a cog in a well-oiled machine of a story.