“It’s such a powerful and integral part of
our life that we really should think about it,” Ulrich.
Over ten year, photographer Brian Ulrich
traveled across America and documented Americans shopping habits. The exhibit
is in three chapters – retail store, thrift shops, and dark – or closed stores. His idea came from an event that happened on first day of school, September 11th 2002. It
was the days that followed that New York’s Mayor Giuliani, President Bush, and
Vice President Cheney all asked the Americans to go shopping following the tragic event. Shopping became a way to return to normal, a way to move on and rebuild normality throughout the country.
Throughout his project he realized how much
shopping and money, became such a protecting factor for the people’s lives in
America at the time. He said “We should think about it in profound ways. We should try to understand it. We should try to understand it and how it’s
responsible for so much.”
He spent his time photographing his
surrounding while shoppers went on. He also captured security guards, night
guards, and buildings for ten years to capture its presence in American society
to make us think. He talked about “How do you get people to
pay attention to this thing that is in our periphery?” asks Ulrich. “How do you
get people to think about this subject; which is big, which is encompassing,
which is representative of so much?”
I find Ulrich's work fascinating, and interesting to think how shopping affects us. After the events of 9/11, asking people to shop to try to return back to normality seems strange at first, but shopping is a normal thing to do, so this would be a great step. His images are very different with the three different chapters showing different aspects. Before this project, I would never have thought about shopping being such a big part of peoples everyday lives. His images show both sides of shops, the bustling, busy days of consumerism, and the closing of some stores left in darkness.