The Panopticon, Fall 2015
Digital color prints, 16 x 20 in.
The concept of the panopticon comes from Jeremy Bentham’s 18th century ideas about surveillance. In the panopticon, the “prisoners” are being monitored by the people in power; though they are never entirely sure when they are being watched and therefore end up imposing self-surveillance. I applied this surveillance system to our capitalist society and the images in my series, "The Panopticon", each represent a different aspect of the societal pressures I find most characteristic of the American lifestyle: internal scrutiny, excess, social obligation, violence, normative gender binaries, and death and consequence.