Tokens

This work exists in a mental space after JCPenney catalogs, before Amazon, when logging onto the internet to secure items I lusted after was as complicated as it was seductive.

There was the maddening risk of a modem’s connection, disconnected. (28,800 bits per second leaves a lot of possibility for a glitch.) There was the nagging question of payment. (13 year olds like myself only carried a library card.)

But of course there was the sublime in it all — the satisfaction that behind closed doors one could summon desire to his desktop or doorstep.

The images in Tokens reflect on a sort of bittersweet consumption — a materialism that tempts, primarily because of the challenge. Nothing worth anything is free.