This series is a combination of staged self portraiture and still lives that investigate both my own and wider society’s psychological sequels in response to our contemporary consumerist environment. My work is informed by our cultural and psychological landscape and contemporary society’s dysfunctional value systems. Individualistic values foster comparison and competition, pushing us further away from one another & in prioritising consumerism over connection, we become increasingly dissatisfied and burnt out as a society. Meanwhile, we are bombarded with ‘spiritual bypassing’, ‘toxic positivity’ and ‘like culture’, dismissing yet exacerbating our ‘age of anxiety’. My photographs address this uneasiness and alienation inherent in the fast pace of hyper-connected and media saturated contemporary culture, filled with passive entertainment and empty distractions of materialism. Imbued with nostalgia and a cinematic feel, my silent images impart the discomfort of a troubling daydream, with their subtle inclination toward the surreal. Using staged objects, ephemera and self-portraiture in my photographs, I aim to convey the awkwardness and hopeless submission to socialized ideals of postmodern culture.