You Eat What You Are, 8.5" x 11," series of digitally collaged photographs, aluminum metal prints, 2019 and ongoing.
You Eat What You Are is a series of digital photographs that explore Carol J. Adam’s theory of the absent referent, and our shared vulnerability as living beings in the world. The costs of production and consumption are often hidden away to the extent that consumption appears to be free of consequences. This series explores the idea of self consumption—that by consuming the other animals, we are actually consuming ourselves by accelerating the demise of the planet through climate change.
Corpses of once living animals line grocery store shelves, they are there—yet not there. Individual animals are absented through the literal dismemberment of their bodies and disappeared by language that renames individuals as undifferentiated masses of “meat.” Yet, we are all made of “meat,” we are all animals and when one of us suffers we all suffer. This series seeks to affirm our connection to the other animals and the planet we all share.
The photographs in this series feature fake advertisements (seen on shopper’s carts and store signage). These fake ads utilize appropriated imagery and are combined with current images documenting climate change in order to highlight the very real consequences “meat,” consumption is having on the planet. The ads reference the over-the-top, hyper-masculine, male-centered tropes found in a majority of advertising today in order to critique, decenter and destabilize patriarchal frameworks that seek to naturalize the objectification of women, animals and the earth.
Corpses of once living animals line grocery store shelves, they are there—yet not there. Individual animals are absented through the literal dismemberment of their bodies and disappeared by language that renames individuals as undifferentiated masses of “meat.” Yet, we are all made of “meat,” we are all animals and when one of us suffers we all suffer. This series seeks to affirm our connection to the other animals and the planet we all share.
The photographs in this series feature fake advertisements (seen on shopper’s carts and store signage). These fake ads utilize appropriated imagery and are combined with current images documenting climate change in order to highlight the very real consequences “meat,” consumption is having on the planet. The ads reference the over-the-top, hyper-masculine, male-centered tropes found in a majority of advertising today in order to critique, decenter and destabilize patriarchal frameworks that seek to naturalize the objectification of women, animals and the earth.