Slideshow project

The group project has worked out. I am in a group of two other people, Jenn Doxsee and Kelly Scott, and we worked productively together. I went home last weekend and took shots in the mall and in the grocery store Sobey’s. I shot for a few hours, took them home, loaded them on the computer and I realized that most of the people in my shots seemed very down and somewhat depressed. These places are supposed to make life easier. Advertisements exist to show off what could make your life better, they show an ideal that only few have supposedly obtain, say celebrities. If you have what we have, you will be happy. Most people don't have what advertisements advertise or have what celebrities have. I’m slowly learning here that our society is surrounded by images that make us envious towards the ideal life. White house, fluffy dog, shiny car, perfect kids, all these things are continuously portrayed through these advertisements.
The images that I took were of people shopping, store shelves, advertisements that came along with a product. I took the shots in black and white to give off a sense of control. I feel like I am living in a society controlled by signs. These signs show us the direction in which we should go in, the direction to happiness. The pictures that I present show people in their unhappy states. It also shows some regular advertisements that help persuade us to buy the products that will make us happy or more efficient. What I’ve come to realize is that everything that humans create is to make us more efficient and quicker in our daily lives. These things are created to give us more time for our enjoyment, but as humans become more and more efficient the result is we have more time to work and make money.