I’VE BEEN THERE

I’ve Been There explores my interest in photography’s role in the commodification of the tourist experience. By re-contextualizing these photographic souvenirs—digital images that were purchased from Kentaro Suzuki, owner of Kimono Rentals in Tokyo—I am critiquing the tourist’s need to validate his or her experience and economic status. The irony, I find, is that these images—evidence of an experience, if you will—simultaneously exposes photography’s illusion due to the theatricality of these portraits. The installation also includes an audio track that is composed of of meditative Japanese music downloaded from Youtube and edited text from the 1992 essay “The Experience Economy,” written by economists B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore