In my town and my neighborhood, as I'm sure in yours as well, visible and melancholy artifacts of an economy and a way of life in decline are in abundance. Maybe there are blocks and blocks of previously well-looked after, lived-in and loved homes on streets and in subdivisions that are now dotted with For Sale or Foreclosure signs. Maybe your downtown strip has as many empty buildings for lease as ones that still have independent businesses running. Maybe it's evident even on a drive from Point A to Point B where large tracts of commercial real estate that previously held box stores and strip malls are denuded of their corporate logos and left abandoned like some postmodern ghost town.
Danielle Aseff takes notice of these changes, and is interested in documenting this stripping away and transformation of a way of life that has characterized America for so long.
Untitled, 2010 by Danielle Aseff
Untitled, 2010 by Danielle Aseff
In the series of work Danielle submitted, she takes a recently shuttered fast food joint as a point of departure. All of our common visual cues are confused when looking faded carpets, stripped interiors—at the shell of something that we had otherwise become so conditioned to recognize, whether we were patrons of these establishments or not. Commercial culture stripped of its iconography and branding is disorienting to our senses and, when shown plainly as Aseff has done in this portfolio, is oddly unsettling to look at. It's as if we're living in a dystopia or post-apocalyptic view, where our markers for commerce and economic vitality have been replaced with...what was it David Byrne sang about? "Nothing but flowers."
Untitled, 2010 by Danielle Aseff
Aseff's work, in this series and beyond, is focused upon the observance of consumerism in our culture, how our habits of consumerism have and continue to change, and how our actions as corporations, individuals and as a collective are informed by this fact of American life. Her portfolio tackles everything from the emotionally strained environments of everyday estate sales to what's left on the curb of suburban America on December 26th. Through photographing scenes and acts that are so ubiquitous and predictable in their nature and their manifestation, Aseff hopes to invoke a dialogue about the effects of hyper-consumerism on the environment, on the quality of life of the people who produce these products, and on a society focused more on the acquisition of things rather than on relationships, meaningful experiences and exchange of ideas. From her statement:
I attempt to capture the clash between human life and the natural world, revealing its impact in a not-so-pretty-but-you-can't-stop-looking kind of way. These images revolve around structures that are physical representations of an optimistic time now passed, yet these buildings still remain, despite the economic decline, left to rot and taking up land.
Between the short-term planning, lack of environmental impact studies performed and an overriding concern for profit above all else, it becomes clear why "disposable" architecture seems so prevalent in American culture. In some cases, it is the "short selling" of our land to businesses that are only temporary, yet have long term effects on our natural resources, which cannot be quickly or easily reclaimed. When these businesses close, they are broken down to just a shell, an empty hull devoid of life. Despite the inherent wastefulness of it all, I still consider these places intensely beautiful and mesmerizing displays of obsolescence.
While there are numerous sympatico photographers working in this vein (Brian Ulrich's Dark Stores project comes readily to mind), the different voices and conclusions made by more artists pursuing similar themes and questions will serve to make this visual field of inquiry richer and more complex.
More projects of Danielle Aseff's can be viewed on her website.