Abstract:
Photographer Brian Ulrich’s Copia: Retail, Thrift, and Dark Stores, 2001-2011exhibition shows a decade-long investigation of consumer culture. The photographs show the excess of big-box stores, the discarded items at thrift stores, and the landscape of empty shopping centers in urban areas. Ulrich’s photography is intended to help us learn about our behaviors, habits, comforts, and purpose. The exhibit starts with the events of September 11, 2001 with the “call to spend” by politicians through the financial collapse of 2008 to the present.