Ivanov VCU Grad Photo Research: Topic 4: Excess

Quotes:

1) Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life -- its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness -- conjoin to dull our sensory faculties.
Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, 1966

2) All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler, Notebooks 1912

Significance:
All of my work inspired by the US is informed by excess which has been a great part of my life in Maryland. The state is one of the richest in the country as many of the people there work in the nations capital, yet Baltimore where I lived is one of the poorest in America. Excess is only realized when contrasted to scarcity and it is subjective. Excess corrupts and motivates. The school I attended seemed to play a big role in realizing the term as it contains huge contrasts within itself. It is one of the expensive schools in the US and although small it attracts students from outside the city and the state. There is the polished facade to be seen by parents, the dirty yet artsy inner environment for the students and behind the scene realm with staff native to the city. Work was not overwhelming but I was a student and a worker in the same time thus played two different roles and having to understand each of them. The first was usually taken by suburban young adults (often called mica kids) and the other was often taken by people who moved from their parents before turning 18, as well as some whose parents left during their early teens. These are two completely different attitudes, often incompatible. Where do I belong in between these 2 categories?

Robert Marantz Henig, What is it about 20 - something?, The New York Times, 8/18/2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html
This article looks into psychology of people, I think the phenomenon described is a result of the 2000's easy lending policy before the recession. The world becomes more and more unreal, the way of life is changing because of lavish promises and more or less vague assumptions of the future.

Images: