Summation of Life. (2018) Photography by Martin Vallis

Image from the series titled 'Street.'

"The Summation of Life / Turn Me On", is a comment on societies obsession with worshipping False Idols, Consumerism/Materialism and of course our Smartphones. It's as if we're constantly looking for something to Turn Us On. For me, my false idol, is probably everything Apple but of course, I also know that as soon as I've bought the latest whatever, within five minutes it's lost it's allure and that nagging feeling of dissatisfaction comes a creeping up again!

I like the David Foster Wallace quote (slightly edited) from, This is Water.

'There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, then you will never have enough. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.'

I print my images on A3 Archival White Matte paper. The image size will be approximately 8x10 or what I consider sits aesthetically correct within the paper size.

Please feel free to contact me if you would prefer a different type of paper and a different finish.

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Turn Me OnSocial CommentWallStreetTexture