Book Review: Salvage by Jackie Nickerson
© Jackie Nickerson
Written by April-Rose Desalegn
Edited by Jana Massoud
In a world of material matter – alluring textures, bright colors, shiny edges, gadgets and gizmos – the individual can become ensnared in a deceptive consumerist culture. In her sublime portrait series Salvage, world-renowned photographer Jackie Nickerson inspects the coercive relationship between consumers and their collected, corporeal objects. Obstructing the faces of her subjects with salvaged objects such as toys, flowers, egg crates and cereal packets, Nickerson positions content as the driver of human identity. Following from her book, Field Test (2020), the visionary continues her research-based inquiry into contemporary conscience, visualising humanity becoming lost at the hands of its material environment.
© Jackie Nickerson
We, as consumers, offset our love and self-expression into tangible objects. Its big business, the externalisation of our happiness – and whilst it is healthy to appreciate the material in small doses, there is no way to mask the grim state of our current context – clothing lasting hundreds of years in landfill, slave labour used to excavate minerals used in phones, and the endless endeavour to obtain these objects contributing to climate disaster. Nickerson smothers her subjects in plastic containers and strangles her bright, collected pieces in pantyhose – kitsch charm juxtaposed with the spiritual vacuum of the capitalist, consumerist West. Nickerson ponders how individuals often place value in their commodities but are disconnected from where those objects come from, or where they are going. It’s an ephemeral relationship – thus, Nickerson puts to us via her lens, Where does consumption end, and conscience begin?
The sitters in each photo seem both suffocated and transformed by their items – their faces completely or partially concealed. Most of the objects are kept pressed to the face with pantyhose which also serves to distort the person’s facial features, keeping their eyes and mouths shut, so they are unable to express emotion through the face, or speak on inner musings. The subjects sit motionlessly before a grey backdrop, with no discernible clothing or features, just the collections adorning each face. “I am using a single sitter and working with the idea that only content drives the perception of identity – not the intrinsic nature of a person”, explains Nickerson in an interview with AnOther.
© Jackie Nickerson
A spiritual anxiety bubbles underneath Nickerson’s work, reminding viewers of how the intrinsic self may be clouded and lost in the material. Woman with Rabbit (2020) depicts a subject with their face completely consumed by a fluffy toy rabbit. In Woman with Dinosaurs III (2020), the subject is blended with toy dinosaurs and an alluring bouquet of fresh flowers which will wilt and lie useless by the falling of night. A cognitive dissonance ensues, grinding beauty against wastefulness with gritted teeth, forcing you to question your own relationships with the things you buy. I began to wonder, have I subconsciously forged a tangible identity? Is my soul a mosaic of pretty, plastic pieces? I have to admit, my purchases provide a short-cut to gratification and convenience of daily living, something the metaphysical cannot offer.
© Jackie Nickerson
Portraiture, historically, was infrastructure of the elite, used to convey high status through the adorning of expensive jewellery, clothing and environment. Nickerson confuses the prestige by decorating the subject in items that individuals may or may not place value upon, such as food trays and a bib – a dance in subversion to reveal the absurdity of the entire charade.
© Jackie Nickerson
Jackie Nickerson is an American-born, British photo artist whose impressive oeuvre spans from Award-Winning fashion editorials to evocative art pieces. Her newest book Salvage offers a complex visual entanglement of human identity with the material environment, evoking questions of the self in a suffocating, consumerist world.
