America

The American street is the heart of the Western civilization - the civilization of consumption. The individual is swallowed by an inflation of images, full of colors and symbols. Human figures are assimilated in this visual abundance. Their clothes are printed using the same images; sometimes they are tattooed right on their skins. Man loses his individuality for a set of symbols flooding the reality in which he acts, thus becoming another product controlled by economic firms that thrive thanks to him. Pop-art has taken the commercial representations out of their context and redefined them as art. The modern street takes Pop-art, duplicates the images it created and reuses them as a design, commercial tool, that of the mass-media. One can find Andy Warholl and Jeff Koons on posters and street signs, recycled and industrialized, downgraded into banal and common advertisement, stand or ad. Pop-art has turned the banal into art, but the street takes art and returns it into the banal. When the photographer separates the street from the spectator by means of the camera frame, he continues, ironically speaking, the perpetual oscillation art -industry - art. The industry, which has been redefined by Pop-art as art, and has returned to the street to serve Capitalism, is redefined as art. The photographer invites the spectator to also take part in this endless conversion concept. The irony depicted in the chaining of quotations brings into awareness the whole system of popular culture industry.