Refrigerators

"A staple of contemporary life, everyone we know has a big cold box in their life; and like anything that we all have, the variations on the theme are endless. How we choose to use it, or not, can reveal volumes about who we are. Anthropology, allegory, sensory cues, economic indicators, the colors and textures of an unintended, unself-conscious diary--our food represents so much. We look at it every day, but how often do we see it?"

Refrigerators by Stephen Schaub is a collection of thirty photographs of where people keep their food cold.

"The refrigerator book was, from a technical standpoint, incredibly difficult to shoot," said Schaub. "If you think about refrigerators, they are primarily lit from the top and the bottom is very dark and you get all the stuff in the way. None of the refrigerators were stylized. This is exactly how they were when I found them. It took an awful lot to find a way to expose and to light them. All of them were done in natural light."

"A refrigerator speaks an awful lot about who the person is. There is the one that has the doll and skull inside. And then the refrigerator filled with film, which is obviously mine. And the refrigerators just filled with milk. There's a lot that can be read into a person by what they have in their refrigerator."

Refrigerators is part of "One Week One Book", a series of photographic art books that explore a single theme. Anthropologic, quirky and sometimes voyeuristic, the books look at wide-ranging subjects, from portraits of the backs of people's heads, to still-lives depicting the contents of their refrigerators. The title of the series, "One Week One Book", is both a statement of artist intention and call to action for the reader. Schaub challenged himself to make a photographic essay on a single subject, and turn it into a book, every week for twelve weeks. READ ABOUT THE SERIES

Refrigerators is available as a single book or in a set of twelve titles.

DETAILS: 72 pages | 8"x9" | perfect-bound | 2020 | ISBN 978-1-927587-41-6 | Published by Kasini House