As wealth inequality continues to grow in American society, it has become clear that the fight against late capitalism and its effects requires an investigation within every industry. This is especially true in the arts and modern image industry because of their enormous influence across American society. This essay will aim to understand the current positions of art and entertainment in our society, investigate possibilities for reform within the arts community, and review the broader image industry. Finally, I’ll speak about my project Consumption and its connection to my broader theoretical investigations.

Full Essay Text Available Here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1stkwweKgR8i7XBXHwDjmP1ZREsBlN9o3h_O6_bA9u-E/edit?usp=sharing

A New Era; How the Image Industry Can Transform an Unequal Society

Present in nearly every town, thousands of independent theaters cover the United States. As important historical landmarks, these community institutions, from vaudeville to film, and in many cases, from neglect to restoration, remain a connection to our past.

In American Theatre, Lyle documents historic theaters across the country. His images highlight a shared culture that unites all Americans while examining how our relationship to the American Theatre has evolved.

American Theatre

Consumption is a series of vignettes about life in late capitalism. In a world losing interest in the laborer, each technological advancement seems to bring us closer to our base value, closer to being replaced. Any question of attaining the callousness required to ignore the poor state of the human condition, and income inequality is something one forgets with an acquired taste for luxury and the passing of time. The continued decline of belief in a better future.

Consumption’s very short stories are constructed through image and text, and speak to the laborer’s constant struggle against fatigue, disenfranchisement, and apathy. My vignettes focus on young people, who are just beginning to understand how to grapple with both the weight of history and their limited role in the making of the future. I use the combination of image and text to reveal a personal story within the larger framework of laboring under late capitalism.
My work is inspired by the tradition of documentary photography, particularly the narrative themes in the work of later practitioners, such as Gregory Halpern’s world building, Wolfgang Tillmans’s search for utopia and Nan Goldin’s effort’s to remember. Roland Barthes is another inspiration, it was his insights into the nature of images that inspired my investigation into the role of capitalist imagery in shaping our understanding of inequality. 

I use the camera to visualize the damage repetitive labor exacts on the body and mind, and to subvert the traditional story of our liberal values by revealing the violence in the effects of capitalism. Capturing images of physical injury, discomfort and mental fatigue, my images aim to meditate on injury while using the visual language of advertising, and desire. Inspired by the dynamic installation works of Tillmans and Goldin, I aim to build the narrative of the work through the viewers own experience with a free association of the images. Just as we build our identities through the accumulation of experiences and items chosen through the simulations of advertising and desire, I hope to build a new, empowered identity for the contemporary laborer.


Consumption

Lavender is a meditation on the anxiety of being in between. In between an individual and citizen, logic and emotion, powerful and powerless. A circular flow of thoughts, feelings and events. Deja vu of deja vu.
	Using the camera in an attempt to restore order in a world of constant unease, my images aim to explore the influences of culture, public institutions, and human connection on my perception of the world. My anxiety grows as the daily realities of living with American culture push into my subconscious; the public filtering into the personal, until they become indistinguishable. 
	Lavender is not the cure, it is only an introduction to a new form of living.

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Ashton Stuart Lyle

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