Big Bucks


  • Photographer
    Nikolai Ishchuk
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    2009
  • Technical Info
    40x40" Lambda prints, acrylic

Money is among the major abstract concepts permeating our lives. Yet its abstract nature is deferred by established practical routines of using and thinking about it. Banknotes, as tangible arbitrary representations of value, are an exemplary embodiment of the resulting “cognitive gap”. This series of oversize lambda prints (from 40x40 inches and technically possible up to 72x72) from processed internegatives intends to give money the abstract treatment it deserves by turning banknotes into large detailed and colorful canvases. Thus, they become totems, objects of worship and celebration, both exploiting and subverting the cult status of money. The images are recognizable as quasi currency, yet due to color shifts, size etc. they do not conform to the value reference system within which they would ordinarily be interpreted. It is a comment on the mutable character of money, its endless transitions to and from various imaginary states (not unlike art itself), serving, among other things, as a metaphor for boom and bust, the bubbles and the crunches.

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