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Sara Cwynar
(Film 3 of 4) Artist Sara Cwynar investigates and deconstructs the role of photography in contemporary life. These four documentary shorts follow Cwynar as she responds to the billions of images that circulate the internet, on the street, and in our homes each day. Through her practice, she explores how these images influence our understanding of beauty, value, and memory in the age of mass media. “Photography has always had this relationship with design and capitalism, where it makes the things that get made seem desirable,” shares Cwynar. “In all my work, I’m trying to think about how that can be problematic, but also, there’s a lot of pleasure in buying things.” Collaging personal snapshots with found photographs and advertisements, Cwynar contemplates and complicates the medium of photography.
Featured artists
About the artists
Sara Cwynar was born in 1985 in Vancouver, Canada, and currently lives and works in New York City. The artist received her BA from York University in 2010 and her MFA from Yale University in 2016. Using photography, film, found materials, and collage, the artist explores the role that photography and image-making have in the production of meaning and value. Cwynar investigates visual cultures and how they change over time: collecting, altering, and re-presenting visual imagery from a wide variety of sources and time periods to comment on the role of commercial and everyday photography in shaping values, ideologies, and aesthetics.
