Your Future Was Not Mine

2017, installation with projections

Your Future Was Not Mine was an installation consisting of a wall size collage from a collection of images taken by photographer Julius Shulman in the 1950’s and 60’s that was then projected on top of to highlight certain images and sections of these images. For example, images of women working and images of fruit bowls. The projections help uncover the uncanny quality of the photographs by cropping in on repeated gestures and motifs that are still seen widely in images meant to portray good taste. A film of the projections was created for and shown in the Integrated Design Thesis show at Parsons in the Spring of 2017.

By replicating, re-ordering, and emphasizing details from a collection of oft reproduced images from the 1950’s and 60’s by photographer Julius Shulman, “Your Future Was Not Mine” aims to criticize the concept of good taste and present viewers with a new way of looking at this storyline. The goal of this work is to remediate the violence of inequality that these images perpetuate in their gender and racial norms, bringing into conversation our acceptance of these images and the narrow view of an ideal future that they have portrayed.

The project was based on research into the history of design and taste, specifically drawing influence from the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th century and the resurgence of these ‘utopian’ ideals in design in the 1960’s in the United States.

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