| Consumerism, in the world of Brian Ulrich, is a tornado of sorts. His photographs, exhibited at the Julie Saul Gallery, depict the space of consumerism after the consumer has consumed and departed. The backroom of a thrift store is full of discarded Nike sneakers, piled one upon the other, inelegant and dead. |  |
Heather Clarke
Consumerism, in the world of Brian Ulrich, is a tornado of sorts. His photographs, exhibited at the Julie Saul Gallery, depict the space of consumerism after the consumer has consumed and departed. The backroom of a thrift store is full of discarded Nike sneakers, piled one upon the other, inelegant and dead. In another photograph, Circuit City, once a successful chain store, is closed and empty, quietly disregarded and forgotten. Consumerism, in this context, is displayed as an ultimate ruin where the remnants of need and satisfaction—clothes, shoes, and electronics—are used and discarded, strewn about as if they never meant anything at all.
This is the question Ulrich asks, without irony, in Thrift and Dark Stores. What, in fact, do these things mean—and even more, what does it mean to shop for them? The artist’s statement reads, “In 2001, citizens were encouraged to take to the malls to boost the U.S. economy through shopping, thereby equating consumerism with patriotism.” Shopping is, in turn, a responsibility, a very sincere way of pledging one’s presence and commitment to American culture and society. Ulrich captures shoppers as they transform from thinking beings to eerily concentrated forms, obsessively intent on finding the right product and thereby exhausting all possible choices. However, the illusion of choice is perhaps the most seductive element of shopping.
The ironic part of shopping, Ulrich once stated in Time Out Chicago, is that “shopping is supposed to represent freedom” but shoppers are often studied to see which products they pick up and buy—and these are the products that are made available. Choice is a grand seduction that situates the shopper in a place of fierce attention and need. Ulrich’s photographs of shoppers are visual chronicles of the anxiety of choice—particularly how a choice, though perceived as tremendously significant in the moment, matters not in the least after a few months. Ulrich’s camera documents the beginning of the consumer’s choice but it is still there after the choice has been made, amongst the wreckage of fulfilled need.
Of course, the need is not fulfilled. Nor will it ever be. But there is a sense in Ulrich’s photographs that on a small-scale, consumerism, as a metaphor, is not entirely distant from all the necessary paradoxes from which continuation is made possible: creation and destruction, death and life. In this context, choice is anything but ironic—it is inevitable.
