This iteration takes handbag advertisements from social media and magazines and removes them from their shiny, glossy context, placing them instead in real-world settings, on real bodies, and printed on cheap paper. Suddenly, an item we typically assign such high value to is reduced to a small paper cutout. By subverting and deconstructing the materiality of the bag, each one is leveled to the same format: a flat, printed image on paper.
In some images, I played with scale, making the bags either comically small compared to their original advertisement or so oversized that they overwhelm the body entirely. This shift highlights the immense power and presence these objects can command. The printed bag becomes a kind of new “skin,” a fabricated outer layer that mimics the original.
In several of the portraits, I deliberately recreated the model’s pose from the advertisement. Ironically, the paper bag still looks surprisingly real, almost believable, on the human body, blurring the line between representation and reality.
