MoCP - Darkroom 2023

Brian Ulrich (United States, b. 1971), June 23, 2010, 8:35pm

For over two decades, Brian Ulrich has captured many places that reflect American spending habits, exploring the roles we play as targets of marketing and advertising. His images range from documentations of people caught in a trance state while shopping, to pictures of dead shopping malls and big box stores, to mountains of discarded objects in second-hand retail storage rooms. In his most recent series titled The Centurion (2013–ongoing), Ulrich turns his focus to the look of luxury and extreme affluence in American culture. The series takes its name from the exclusive American Express black card that is offered by invitation only and empowers holders to purchase anything without limit. Ulrich focuses on rising economic disparities and the damaging effects of extreme monetary wealth as the dominant measure of success, calling the images “emblematic of a new Gilded Age—where illusion manifests itself as power through wealth.”

Brian Ulrich’s photographs are held in numerous private collections and museums including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the North Carolina Museum of Art. In 2009, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. This year, The Centurion will be published by FW:Books in a monograph.

https://notifbutwhen.com/