12 Days of Christmas

Twelve? Was it ever really twelve? I can’t remember a year that ever happened. I mean now we have a whole season for the thing. It starts just after Halloween and carries on through Thanksgiving and only really ends with New Years. Through those “twelve days” we are encouraged to buy, buy, buy. The holiday is measured in profits and sales. Black Friday is all weekend and Cyber Monday is now almost two weeks.

Am I the only one seeing the weird distortion of time and consumerism? Tell me it isn’t just me.

“The state of the nation depends on your holiday shopping for gosh sakes.” I haven’t heard anyone tell me that but I hear it in their words. A tax plan being passed as a “Christmas present” for the middle class. More like for the accountants, unless they wanted to enjoy some time off like the rest of the “middle class”. But I am getting off topic.

I felt more festive on Christmas eve and Christmas day than I have in a while. The reason is layered but I am attributing a large portion of it to two things. A limited time on Facebook and taking time to photograph this series.

Allowing myself time to reflect on my feelings, explore them through photography, and compose all of that into a visual story is a medicine I have been taking more often lately.

The idea of our consumer-centric society has really been weighing on me the past few years. I have explored around the topic, dove into it from time to time, but with this project I wanted to take it head on. Well as head on as I get with my work which lands somewhere between fine art and documentary.

In the end I find the photographs to be beautiful in their ugliness. A sorrow that makes me lean back in my chair and smile.