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CHEMICAL BEINGS
"Your food in America is abnormal.", my foreign friend replied as she ate her salad. "How so?", I asked. "Well, for example, the cucumbers in America are huge in comparison to the cucumbers in Japan. It's not normal! I feel like I'm eating a science project.",she answered.
This conversation made me conscientious as I ate anything after that day. How many strange horrors have I come in contact with? Has my everyday life played a part in some bizarre science project? These are a few of the questions I began to ask myself. I began to think about how chemically dependent we are in American society: "Have a headache? Have some aspirin. We don't really know how aspirin works, but have some anyway." Without question, we seem to trust our doctors and scientists and expose ourselves willingly to various chemicals.
I'm not declaring whether this trust is right or wrong, good or bad. I only question the extent to which we expose ourselves to science (as I reach into the photo chemicals to produce my prints). What do we truly consider as unnatural? If we prevent ourselves from using science, could we evolve as the human race? My latest series of photographs expresses the oddities that could come from experimenting with nature. I experimented with the process of making this series to give an unnatural appearance to what we need to survive. In creating this project, I came to realize that science frightens me, and yet I am curious enough to experiment.
erikakarl.com: 1998