ARTIST STATEMENT
My ongoing body of work Terms & Conditions is a series of photographs and collages that interpret the relationship between social media use, the negative implications of excessive e-consumerism in beauty markets, and the Internet’s obsession with the pursuit of beauty. Through this series, I am reflecting on the continuous trend cycle that colored my early online experiences and its looming presence in the contemporary social media landscape. By photographing and collaging my own beauty products, I am identifying myself as an active participant in the mania of trend-following. Thus, Terms & Conditions functions as the self-reflective examination of an insider and not a detached critical response. I experiment with the rules of advertising photography as a way to situate this work as an analog to the e-beauty market. In order to subvert these conventions, I digitally colorize and distort my black-and-white photographs and collages. These interventions mimic the highly constructed nature of online identity and reinterpret the beauty product as an idol to be worshiped and feared.
The tactility of beauty ritualism is often not represented in the advertising and influencer-made media used to promote specific products. When using these products, I am applying liquids and creams, tweezing and microblading the hair from my face, and bonding mink eyelashes to my own to hide the natural ones. This metamorphosis of the physical self is all done in my pursuit of beauty. Beauty is marketed as a polished, clean surface, like that of the cold mirror I stare into in the mornings, yet to get to beauty as a state of being I put my body through processes that feel more like a scientific experiment. Sometimes I think of Dr. Frankenstein sewing together his monster as I tweeze and tweeze and tweeze to make sure my eyebrows are as close to symmetrical as humanly possible. These experiments, rituals, or routines feel both human and inhuman. To feel like myself, I situate myself in these various routines, yet these routines further remove myself from my natural state of being. If I don’t tweeze my eyebrows they connect in the middle, like caterpillars creeping slowly towards one another in a strange mating dance. My hair after a shower covers my whole bathroom and sticks to my body; slick, wet, and tangled like one of the monsters I feared was under my bed when I was a child. I always quickly apply the goop I purchased from the drugstore around the corner in order to tame it, to make it not feel so strangling. I compare my reflection to the women I see in my phone. They feel like my enemies but the amount of time we spend together makes them my closest companions. I stare in something like awe, wonder, jealousy, disgust as they tell me more ways I can be pretty, more things I can buy to fast track my path to pretty. I frown at my box dyed hair in the mirror; I wish I was born blonde.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nora Benjamin (b. 1999) is an experimental photographer and collagist based in Chicago.
In her photographs and collages, Nora uses a visual language heavily influenced by surrealism. Her work often explores themes of delirium, hyperconsumerism, and identity. She experiments with color, distorted perspectives, and other techniques to create imagery that evokes a sense of a dream-like state. Her work challenges viewers to consider how modern culture distorts reality and shapes our perception. She graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta with a B.F.A. in Commercial Photography and a minor in Advertising and Branding: Art Direction. Nora also holds an M.F.A. in Photography from Columbia College Chicago. She is currently teaching as an adjunct professor at Purdue University Northwest.
© Nora Benjamin