A refrigerator is both a private and a shared space. One person likened the question, "May I photograph the interior of your fridge?" to asking someone to pose nude for the camera. Each fridge is photographed "as is." Nothing added, nothing taken away.
Mark Menjivar - http://www.markmenjivar.com/ - make sure to check out his taglines for each photograph, too.
Andrew Hainen
ReplyDeleteADP III :: James Rotz
Weekly Statement :: Tuesday November 3rd, 2009
I just took a quick look at Mark Mejivar’s “You Are What You Eat” series and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In my opinion, the project seems like a CFC project done really well: out there and simple but can be done to extreme lengths. After reading the captions about the person, you look at their food and wonder if there is some reason they like the things they do. My favorite was the bartender who gets home at 8am everyday and his entire fridge was a pretty much takeout box.
As for the class, this week we had one day where we watched a movie on manufacturing in China and other eastern hemisphere locations. The beginning was about 10 minutes of walking through a large factory and looking separately at each aisle. This effect was seen as effective when I saw kids rolling in their seats and leaving, wondering when it would end. I sat back and began to think “the workers there must feel the same way, trying to walk through this monster of a building and trying to still feel important.” I started to feel down, and it was hard because I looked at each person in there thinking, “Everyone of those people is a person, with feelings and emotions and a brain and a heart and problems and hobbies and etc.” I guess it made me feel very privileged, but it wasn’t too bad; the factories were clean, and they had good sunlight and did provide them with money and a place in society. As bad as that might sound, its leaps and miles ahead of what things probably were under Mao and before that.
The movie progressed and looked at abandoned ships with people getting the oil for a living. It was hard to watch, but at the same time I was just thinking about what Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Hotel Rwanda said: “People say, ‘That’s terrible’, then they go back to eating their dinners.” It’s sad but it’s so true. We see things like this all the time, in the similar light, but they only temporarily shock us. It’s so hard to take back with us the feeling once we leave the room or leave the theater and actually do something. We give to charities, we maybe give the homeless change, but watching these movies really only makes us feel guilty and less in control of helping. I liked the movie and it was good to see, but again, it’s just hard to really make yourself see each and every person for who they really are.
Marian Perez
ReplyDeleteADP III
10/29/09
Mark Menjivar’s work is really interesting, although I wish he had more work. His site is a bit boring, especially compared to Jason Salavon’s. I think taking photos of a fridge makes a good point about our diets and how we are what we eat. We eat junk or messy things, care or don’t care about what intake. My fridge never really looks as messy as the ones portrayed in the works, but that’s what makes them so interesting.
I thought a lot about fridges, how something we use for conserving food is important to our health, besides of what it is that we are buying. It also got me thinking of brands, the specific food brands we like to buy and which ones are low or high quality. Some people are willing to pay twice as much for imported fancy coffee when others will just buy the standard or even store brand. This is where we can start to see social classes be more distinguished, at any supermarket based on what and how much they buy.
Then I got reminded of Culture Jam because of the brands we are told to buy in food and which ones are popular. We do remember a lot of food products based on there commercials or jingles, especially Chips Ahoy, McDonalds, Coca Cola, and Cheerios. Celebrities are even taking a role in selling certain products they approve of by being in ads or commercials for a company, such as Michael Jackson being in a commercial. I also thought about food prices that have gone up based on certain brands today compared to a couple years ago. People do not always have a full fridge any more as much they used to, especially in other countries where getting food is more difficult. We are becoming more cautious of the brands we buy and how much they are, especially here in Michigan. Meijer, Kroger, and especially Wal Mart, have been trying to get more customers by coming up with ways and commercials to show shoppers they can safe money shopping at their store.
As for the film we watched in ADP lecture this week, I must admit it was quite boring and weak in making it’s point. It is even evident in the way the narrator of the film itself sounds uninterested and bored. The beginning was way too long and did not capture an audience well. It was repetitive and shoved the same images of a factory and line workers over and over again to the point of it being uninteresting. The only part I enjoyed was when the workers were all outside in yellow jackets. The repetition and large quantities of production in the factory gets portrayed in the workers because they were so many of them that looked similar. Even the type of jobs the workers performed was boring and look unbearable, I felt sorry for the workers. I sort of wish we could have watched the whole movie because I did not get the whole nature theme or points mentioned in the beginning of the movie. The film could have been a lot better if cut to the chase right from the beginning and not be so repetitive in the scenes.
I thought that the film Manufactured Landscapes was insightful in that you got to see what the factories over seas really are like. We all know that most of the things we buy are made in China. I was however unsure if the point of the film was to make me think that these factories over sees are really bad. I was actually surprised how good the conditions in the factory were. Yet, I do imagine that doing the work can be extremely boring. To me they remind me of the auto factories that used to be in Michigan. So in a way I didn’t feel that sorry for the works because I know of a lot of people from my community back home who would really like to have there factory job back. At one time working at a factory was a good job. Yet, with the film I don’t know like how long these people are working or how many breaks and what not that they get. Which, would be another factor in the working conditions.
ReplyDeleteSeeing the construction of the dam was I thought at first kind of amazing in that it shows how we as humans can really change the landscape. I can only imagine the number of engineers that it would take to figure out how to do such a project or how long it took them to do. It really is a huge project. However, at the same time it made me wonder if it is really a good idea to change the landscape so much? What does will be the consequences of doing this? But I’m sure that the engineers and what not thought about this. Yet, what if they were wrong or under estimated? In a way it seems like a shame that they had to destroy an entire town in order to do this. But then I thought that maybe they could redesign a new better city.
Overall I thought that the film was good in that is showed us the things that we often hear about but never get to see.
I thought the concept for Mark Menjivar's photographs was really interesting, but what I really enjoyed was the little piece of information he provides about each person. My favorite was the person who has a photographic memory for useless information. I thought this pertained to discussions we had, about information overload and not even realizing all of the ads and information that we are bombarded with every day. Even looking at these refrigerators, which just has food and drinks in it, you can see so many labels and pieces of information in them. I feel bad for someone who had a photographic memory for things like that, it would be extremely annoying. One thing that I don't buy about the photographs is that sometimes they look staged. I understand that nothing was added or taken away, but really? who puts in a jar, just so, so that the label is showing from the outside? I know my fridge looks like stuff was just thrown around in there. I'm wondering if he moved some things around for the composition of the picture. And if that's true, it would be interesting to see how people's behavior affects their relationship with food. Like me and my brother don't have a lot of food in our fridge and its kind of randomly thrown in places (and we eat total junk like hotpockets, chips, and the random brie) but then you might see a fridge where everything is placed, just so and then they eat really healthy organic foods. Maybe its not only "we are what we eat" but also "we are what we eat and how we eat". I saw some of this starting to emerge in his photos, but the compositions seemed forced so I didn't buy it as readily.
ReplyDeleteConcerning the movie we watched, my favorite part was actually the beginning scene in the factory. At first I thought everything was making the same thing, but as they keep going down the row it becomes clear that many different products are being made. I was shocked by the variety of tools and processes being used in a shared space. People were sewing, and then 10 feet away people were welding or something. They do the same thing day after day, and that's it there's no problem its just how it is. Kind of like with the refrigerators, human behavior becomes prone to routine and I just think its strange. We humans love structure and a system for everything, and while it makes things easier it seems stifling. But we find ways to give importance to whatever we do. They were interviewing one woman who made something (I can't even remember what it was) but I do remember that she was extremely proud of the product and was explaining how it was made with all the top quality materials, and was the best etc. She didn't design this product, nor does she own the company who sells it. She merely assembles it but she emphasizes its importance because its importance is what makes her important. So, not only is she finding value in a repetitive task, but she is also placing her importance in the value of a product. Seems a lot like american consumerism to me.
Brijit Spencer
ReplyDeleteADP III
James Rotz
11.3.09
I looked through Mark Menjivar’s “You are what you eat” project and thought it was very interesting. I liked that each fridge had he owner’s name, household, career, and income and it was interesting to see how each ate differently. I thought this was a very clever representation of the age-old saying “you are what you eat” and got me thinking about my own diet. Although I am definitely guilty of being an over-consumer, my fridge is pretty much empty. I share this refrigerator with one other person and, looking through the various vegetables, cheeses, beverages, etc. that sat inside, I realized hardly any of this food was mine. Literally two items in the entire fridge were purchased by me; a bottle of ketchup and some strawberry jam. I don’t even have anything to eat these condiments with. I don’t eat right and feel like this mainly has to do with me being lazy. I am not eating enough healthy foods and the things I do consume everyday are usually purchased readily made. I’d like to get some real groceries, but the truth of the matter is I don’t have enough money. It’s sad that being fiscally responsible has lead to me abandoning my health. However, even if I can’t afford to buy quality food, I could be utilizing the university’s food-I have a meal plan. I have simply been either too lazy or too busy. Why would I walk to the dining hall when I can just sit in my apartment and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or grab a bite from Quiznos? This needs to change. If I was used as a subject for Menjivar’s photos, my caption would be “lazy art student, Ann Arbor, MI, 2 person household, doesn’t care about eating right” with a picture of a fridge full of someone else’s food.
On a different note, the movie we watched in class was somewhat of an eye opener for me, probably in a different way than what would be expected. Rather then feel truly impacted by the lives of these workers, or feel bad for the conditions presented, I took the beginning of the film very personally. At one point in my childhood, my mother worked on a factory assembly line. I don’t even remember what it was she did or even what company she worked for (the job was shortlived) but I remember her coming to pick us up from school wearing a white protective suit, her mask still around her neck. She did not even have time to change before she rushed to get us after work. She hated his job, I could tell, but she didn’t complain. Seeing the workers in the movie, seeing how monotonous and boring and tedious their tasks were, made me realize what my mother put up with to keep our family going. It gave me a newfound respect for her. Also, I think the beginning, as ridiculously boring as it was, was very successful. It really portrayed the nature of the assembly line job.
Did anyone notice the rattlesnake in the short-order cook’s freezer? The “You are what you Eat” project was very interesting but pretty depressing. I suppose coming from a middle class family with a say at home mom who’s job was to go grocery shopping and organize the kitchen had made me have an unrealistic predisposed idea of what a fridge should look like. Most of these people were living off processed foods, milk and eggs. The healthiest eaters seemed to be the teachers and designer. Looking and seeing a family of six surviving off of eggs and ketchup makes you realize clearly there has to be another way to disperse wealth and also supply families with healthy food. In Cleveland, my stepmother works with a lot of underprivileged families who rely on food stamps. She’s expressed her anger toward the government for giving people these food stamps that only work towards very unhealthy and overproscessed foods. If we could supply everyone with healthy vegetables, and fruits the world would be a more balanced place, and I think that people would feel better too.
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting chapter in this section of Culture Jam this week was to me the one on corporations and their history in the American Revolution. I had no clue that we the people of the United States actually at one point had had control over corporations and had a grasp on our humanity. I thought that corporations were a product of recent times, and had not considered them to have been present at the time of our revolution, although I had been educated on the east Indian trading company and other companies of the like. The fact that initially people did not want to be ruled by corporations is a bit uplifting, it shows that people may still have an underlying yearning to break away from consumer culture and stop being ruled by companies. However, its also discouraging to see that even since our fifteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, we have been warned by the power of corporations, and yet we’ve still let them gain total control of our lives. In order for us to reclaim our power we have to educate the public on what consumption and corporations really are. I have to admit although I’ve taken ecology and environmental science classes, I never really understood the importance and the detrimental effects of consumerism until this term. It’s clear to me that this education needs to be more present in the American school system if we want to have any hope of standing up to major corporations. This in itself poses a problem, however, because of sponsoring of schools from various corporations. Perhaps private schools may be able to have classes on environmental effects of consumerism and how we can make a change in the world, but there is no way we would be able to make that change in public schools. Especially now, with public schools struggling so much with budget, any way they can come up with money to support the staff, food, and basic classes, they will take.
Matthew Acomb
ReplyDeleteADP III
James Rotz
This is really interesting. I can’t help but try to look for some connection between the contents of the fridge and the description of the owners in the caption. I’m curious whether or not the artist sought out people who might have quirky living situations, such as the bartender that got up at 4PM and went to bed at 8AM or the guy who ate nothing but doughnuts for three years straight.
This kind of reminds me of when I go home and the difference between how my mom’s fridge looks and how my dad’s looks (they are divorced and obviously have separate fridges).
My mom’s fridge usually is consistently stocked with very good healthy food. My dad’s is pretty hit or miss. One week it will be completely stocked with what I view as a more typical American selection of food and the next there will be nothing but condiments and maybe some yogurt or something.
I would have to say that my mom’s fridge is probably a more accurate reflection of myself, or maybe it’s just the fridge I would be less embarrassed to be associated with.
I have always thought it was interesting to look at the types of stuff other people had in their fridge. When I would go to friend's houses when I was younger, I remember being surprised at how different their selection of food was than what I had at home. I wouldn’t necessarily think their food was weird more so than use it as an indication as to what normal people eat. They usually had a lot more food in the house at any given time than my family. I always chalked it up to the fact that most of my friends had grandparents that were older than mine which meant that their consumption habits were partially caused by what they experienced in the great depression. Since my grandparents didn’t really experience this, they did not pass down these consumer habits to my parents and as a result we never had Coke in our fridge.
I would have to say that my mom’s fridge is probably a more accurate reflection of myself, or maybe it’s just the fridge I would be less embarrassed to be associated with.
Shelby Roback
ReplyDeleteADP III
The first thing that came to mind while looking at Menjivar’s photographs was my own fridge. Growing up my father was an obsessively organized man when it came to food and clothes. (The mess on the dining room table was a different story.) Our fridge was highly organized as well. Leftovers on one shelf, condiments in the door, drinks on top, and separate drawers for candy, meat, cheese, and produce. Looking at my fridge in my current apartment, things are a lot different. First of all there is a lot less food. (My father also stocked up like he was expecting a nuclear holocaust at any time.) The little food that I have is still slightly organized, but most of it is jumbled around, and half of the leftovers are spoiled meals that I don’t have enough motivation or time to clean out. All in all it looks like an average college student’s fridge.
I think the best part about Menjivar’s fridge series was the captions underneath the pictures. It’s amazing to see how people’s lives and personalities are reflected in the types of food that are in their fridge and how they organize what they have. Some of the fridges were especially stereotypical. The night worker’s fridge was filled to the top with take out containers, and the person on a low fixed income had almost no food at all. The schoolteacher from Texas, on the other hand, shows how people easily succumb to trends and different phases over time. She decided only a week before the picture that she was going to eat locally grown vegetables, and already her fridge is stuffed with all sorts of local greens. After looking over all the pictures, I have a slightly different view on food. I no longer think that people “are what they eat” , but rather “eat what they are”.
Trisha Previte
ReplyDeleteI found the pictures from Mark Menjivar’s you are what you eat collection completely fascinating and insightful. Sure, on first glance these pictures look like some dull photographs of refrigerators, but after further inspection, each one without doubt tells a unique story and provokes questions. For instance, I noticed one depicting a freezer with a snake; this made me wonder why on earth would anyone have a snake in his or her freezer? Was he or she intending to eat that snake? If so, why? The odd items inside each icebox did not end there: another appeared to have a folded American flag shoved under some food. For what purpose are these items in a refrigerator, I wonder?
Furthermore, while looking at these refrigerators I noticed myself automatically making comparisons to my own food possessions. One freezer contained only a bottle of Jose Cuervo and the meat from a 12 point buck, and I thought, how odd! But really, how odd is it? To this particular person it may seem completely normal, if not downright thrilling, to have that much meat in a freezer along with some good booze. A lifestyle such as this is completely foreign to me, yes, but that is no reason to dismiss it as odd or abnormal. I don’t feel alone as a user of this type of discrimination, but after seeing these pictures I am realizing the importance of seeing the world outside my own refrigerator as key to better understanding of people and their actions and beliefs.
Of all the brilliance components that form these photographs, my favorite part, however, had to be the captions beneath each one. These small snippets of interesting information about the owners provide even further, deeper indication that is the complexity of these people’s lives. Remember the freezer with the snake inside? The caption tells us that the owner is a short order cook in a household of two, who can bench press 300 lbs. Now the story becomes more interesting, for what typical woman can bench press 300 lbs? Why, one with a snake in her freezer of course! This tiny piece of information heightens the dynamics of this photograph to level of intrigue surpassing that of just the photos alone. The captions allow the viewer to piece two and two together, to rein in the limits of the story and make plausible conclusions as to why certain items reside in certain fridges and in many cases how these items must impact the owner on a daily basis. Some examples are even quite heartbreaking; one fridge filled with food for what I thought must have been 3 person household was meant to feed 6.
Similarly, the video we watched in lecture this week provided artistic insight into the laboring conditions inside factories. The monotony of the filmography definitely underscored the monotony of a factory worker’s day, and just as those factory workers clearly assumed expressions of boredom, so I too began, but unlike those workers I could, technically have walked out that classroom at any time and be done with it. These workers, who work for minimum wage to feed themselves and their families, have no other options. Seeing this horrible system at work, forced upon these brave and hard-working women and men, definitely injected me with thoughts of revolution and change. Sure, the working conditions did not seem too horrible, but at the end of the day who wants to have performed the same task over and over without relent? Unfortunately, in this week’s reading of Culture Jam, Lasn makes an excellent point in regards to his own personal habits, habits that he feels both guilty and proud of. He says, in regards to the detrimental aspects of consumerism, “I hate all these things and yet I still drive my Toyota... And so my relationship with my Toyota and the autoindustry is full of guilt, and angst and barely repressed anger” (83).
I have to say, as much passion and insight as the refrigerator and manufacturing pieces brought to me, as resentful of myself a I am, I’m still driving around my Toyota.
Dana Pierfelice
ReplyDeleteADP Response 6
Without the informational caption underneath these photos I think the portrait would be incomplete. Looking at the contents of the fridge you can deduce the human involvement with this fridge. Obviously there is the act of putting food into the fridge, but there is so much more interactions beyond that. A fridge full of take out boxes implies weeks of hurried eating. Someone who can’t be bothered with cooking for themselves. Then you see a fridge full of veggies and know that this is too much food for one person. You take their lifestyle in account because of what they eat. This is someone who can afford to maintain this lifestyle. While looking through this fridge and others I became slightly excited whenever I saw anything that might show up in my fridge at school or at home. Just by a simple object I was able to muster up some sort of connection with this stranger.
Adding the captions isolates me a step from the subject. Yet, with that I feel like the portrait is more comprehensive. There is so much you can tell from a fridge, sometimes there is more you can tell from a photo. But just to have a line that says “Ate nothing but donuts for over three years.” These captions compliment the photos well because they do not reiterate what you see in the fridge, or even explain the items. Rather, they add to the quirks of the fridge. They give you more of a finished image of a person. In some ways this caption can help humanize the fridge while isolating you from the person. This is because you are more aware of the differences between yourself and the person. With these disparities a fridge becomes more than just a fridge but a portrait.
November 3, 2009
ReplyDeleteAmber Harrison
I really enjoyed the work my Mark Menjivar, particularly the “you are what you eat series.” I feel like he took a very intimate area that is often overlooked and exposed the innards of strangers to the world. Each of us could fit to one of the fridges, and responds with a feeling of familiarity. Within his quote “nothing added, nothing taken away” I do believe that there may have been posing of certain items for compositional value. Some may see this as deception but I do not.
I feel as long as there was nothing added and nothing detained, then it is an accurate portrait of the people. I often rummage through my fridge and the portrait of what I eat and how changes from day to day. The items are still being represented accurately through these portraits, even if they may be manipulated. Images throughout art are manipulated; it is part of how artists learn how to work with their medium. Mark is a photographer who is working with his subject. “My hope that we will think deeply about how we care… for our bodies.” This was definitely one of the aspects to my own reaction. I was very saddened by some of the refrigerators. Not because the lack of food, but because of the lack of nutrition. I have to be very conscious of my eating habits because of food allergies. When looking at some of these portraits I questioned how their health was, and if there were others like me, how were they surviving on poor nutrition. I feel the food we eat is incredibly personal and tells the world more about us then we often realize. Mark’s work sparks thought about consumerism of commercialized brands. There is almost a recognized label in every single image. Our consumption of food seems to be as bad as our label hungry youth at the malls. I really enjoyed analyzing the validity, and meaning behind marks work concerning the artistic license he took as well as his viewpoint.
While I would feel much more comfortable having my untouched refrigerator photographed than my naked body, the idea that Mark Mejivar explores in his “you are what you eat” project is extremely relevant. He takes a unique approach to consumerism by letting food, and more specifically refrigerated goods, act as a metaphor for the person it belongs to and for our culture at large. Several weeks ago on a PowerPoint slide, Joe Trumpey showed us images of families from different parts of the world and the food they ate in an average week laid out before them. What lingered in my mind was the fact that the American family at far more packaged goods and far less fruits and vegetables and Mejivars photographs trigger a similar reaction from me. I am startled at how much what we eat reflects our personality and because of this I don’t feel judgment when looking at the photographs. The captions beneath each image really complete the project in my opinion. Even the small tidbit of personal information provided allows me to imagine the person who belongs to the refrigerator. Mejivar’s work interests me on a personal level because my older sister lives in Austin, Texas where many of the photographs were taken.
ReplyDeleteI saw Manufactured Landscapes last year in my CFC I class in relationship to Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers and Tides and how both artists’ work involve the environment but in very different ways. The opening shot is incredible and because it is the first thing we see it is so memorable. From a filmic perspective, the shot is incredible. There are no cuts and the length really illustrates the vastness of the factory.