TRENDS in PHOTOGRAPHY: Melissa HRIBAR (USA)

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www.mmhribar.com/montages

 

 

My work is a satirical exploration into the negative aspects of American Consumerism. American culture defines itself by their excessive habits of buying and selling goods. Just as in the earliest days where the photographic image was taken as truth, so too does this age take television as the words of a modern gospel. We find ourselves bombarded with advertising imagery wherever we turn, whether it’s on the television or walking down the street. And it is this assault on our senses that desensitizes us to the differences between need and want. I use digital montage to both comment on and mimic this fragmented and disorienting experience of watching television, reading a magazine, or surfing the web. The juxtaposition of dissimilar elements in the work forces the viewer to re-evaluate their experiences with mass media because the confrontation of an unbelievable representation of reality leaves the viewer enticed by the image's truthful characteristics, yet questioning the trickery of the reinterpreted advertising elements. The use of appropriated imagery allows for the recycling of mass media combined with personal photographic images attempts to make sense out of the overwhelming consumer experience. Were all my needs met? Did I find everything I was looking for?

"Resistance Is Futile" depicts the strong-arm that advertising has over mass culture. Americans are conditioned to think that purchase is need, that desires will be fulfilled or at least satiated through the practice of buying. The Energizer bunny, an advertising icon, attempts to round up docile rabbits in a field, underscoring the extreme absurdity and lack of judgment on our part as individuals, or individual consumers. The juxtaposition of the armed soldier exhibits the force and extent with which advertising facilitates corporate manipulations of the consumer into believing they need to buy, buy, buy.

The "Untitled" piece exaggerates the way television affects the viewing culture. The television is not only a window into the soul, or lack thereof of the average consumer, but a way for disseminating our bad habits to the on looking world. This improbable scene portrays televisions invading the desert where a young boy salutes the screens with honor and a native woman carries a TV on her head as a symbol of the high value people place on television and what they learn from it. Televisions overtake the desert, symbolic of the non-Western world, dominating the landscape, indicative of its supremacy in people's lives around the world. I have been drawing and painting since early childhood until I attended the Rhode Island School of Design and concentrated on photography. While there, I began cutting and pasting the magazines I purchased into collages while watching television. Eventually these collages evolved out of my sketchbooks into the work I make today.

Melissa Hribar
www.mmhribar.com

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