Personal Matter

            The relationship between objects and people starts very young; if you ever watch a child with their favorite toy, you can see that they value the object beyond simply something to play with. These experiences carry on throughout our lives as we collect objects that remind us of important events and memories, even if these objects have no useful value, such as ticket stubs and notes from friends or lovers.

How do these surrounding, which we both collect and control, affect our moods? What can you tell about a person by what they surround themselves with? In this project I will explore portraiture through the objects in the subject’s homes, creating one hundred images of each person’s belongings. These images in turn become new objects to love, collect or line your house with.

            What do our collections and say about us? Can these material traces do we leave behind go on to define us? How much of our identity is bound to these objects that we work so hard to acquire? Tying together ideas of work ethic (laboring?), materialism and identity I will create one hundred images of the material possessions of each sitter, building up a portrait through these accumulated images.

The quantity of work produced for each portrait and the time invested in each reflects the amount of time taken to acquire these objects. Each portrait will be done over 10 days, spending several hours in the sitter’s home per visit to give me an idea of the character of each sitter.

                                                                            
As we gather these more and more possessions, how much of our identities do they represent? As our homes become fuller, and our collections heavier, what does this reflect about egos and perhaps our culture? The viewers will have to draw conclusions, to decide for themselves what each person’s possessions say about them. Who is the person that belongs to these objects?