Shopping Therapy…
As the Chinese economy passes Japan’s to become the world’s second largest, China’s Long March to consumerism has made it the most important new market for the manufacturers of everything from autos (its domestic market is now larger than the U.S.’) to cosmetics and fashion (“China will be the world’s biggest market for high-end products in a decade”)
But not everyone in China is happy with the change. Beijing-based photographer Wang Qingsong combines modern logographics with traditional cultural symbols to create allegories of excess and decay…
See (larger versions of the photos above and) more of this Beijing Bosch at The International Center of Photography in New York, where an exhibition of Wang Qingsong’s work– “When World’s Collide”– is up through May 8, or at ICP’s web site: icp.org.
As we get back in touch with our inner Thorstein Veblen, we might recall that it was on this date in 1872 that Luther Crowell patented a machine for the manufacture of accordion-sided, flat-bottomed paper bags. (That said, Margaret E. Knight might more accurately be considered the”mother of the modern shopping bag”: she perfected square bottoms two years earlier.)
