LIMBS

‘Limbs’ is a set of imagery selected from a Masters project ‘A Fashionably Grotesque Consumer Fetishism’.

The series is about consumer fetish, objectification of the body and performance of the self. The use of dismembered body parts remove identity and represent individuality lost through consumption. There are signifiers of the grotesque body and the carnival through oddities, humour, horror, awkward and animalesque pose. With the plinth and simple staging, I take inspiration from my professional practice with e-commerce product imagery and flash photography.

Fashion both celebrates the unconventional but also serves to reenforce the dominant ideologies of body and beauty, and I believe the illusion of capitalism is that if you buy you will be happy and if you look the part you will succeed.

“The fundamental desire behind the illusion of freedom is the desire to be unique.

Choice is the foundation of identity. Remove identity and choice becomes empty, remove choice and identity is reduced to destiny…We do not dream identity. It is only in our waking hours that we ‘struggle’ over it.” (Gabriel, 2015: 29)