JONATHAN HARRISON SIMONS

High culture is gradually becoming nothing more than a memory as we abruptly transition into an age in which commercial speech is rapidly becoming the universal tongue. In response to our anxieties, we have instinctively voted with our currency to abbreviate our past and consume the present. As a culture primarily motivated by tensions surrounding our inevitable deaths, we live only in the future. We have yet to understand death and we have become overly aware of its implications. To cope with these mortal stresses, we are emotionally driven to seek meaningful ownership. Through our possessions we measure our self-worth and desperately compete in order to preserve ourselves in time. In this earthly purgatory, as we anticipate eternal judgment, we continuously collect products that promise us salvation from ourselves. Through photography and music, I tell the story of our material quest for self-purpose and how it has altered our society.