Triggered: Tatum Shaw

Sunbeam in the Sun, © Tatum Shaw

Image and Text by Tatum Shaw

Sunbeam in the Sun

Sunbeam is a regional brand of bread very prominent in the American South. My Nana always had it on hand at her home, where we would come to swim in the summers when I was very young. 

I’ve lived in Portland, Oregon for fifteen years, so whenever I go home and see Sunbeam, it always takes me back to those summers I can barely remember, except for the feelings they gave me. My series Plusgood!, the body of work this image belongs to, is an attempt to recreate those feelings. 

This photo was taken on family vacation on an island off the Georgia coast. I had been taking the package of bread around and shooting it in different locations with varying degrees of success. On this particular day, we had some ice cream shipped in from a shop in Portland, containing bags of dry ice. The hot sun produced the smoking effect on the ice, like a burning ghost. It seemed like an interesting, yet naive way to abstract my feelings about this product. Sort of dumb, actually. Which was perfect. So I put the ice in between two slices and bounced some sea light onto it.

The Atlantic ocean is about twenty yards out of frame, and the breeze was whipping the smoke around in this sort of surreal way. 

I was feeling all the feelings.

See more Tatum’s work here.