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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Sixty Eight: A city portrait -- impressions of New York > Spectacle, New York City, New York, 2016
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02-NOV-2016

Spectacle, New York City, New York, 2016

In the fall of 2016, this seven-story high advertisement, superimposed upon the façade of an apartment building, created a surreal incongruous spectacle high over Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue. I built this image by comparing the building’s tiny windows to the massive face of a model wearing sunglasses with tiny circles on them. At the time, I did not have a context for this advertisement. I was simply making a picture of another picture, albeit an incongruous, enormous, mystifying image, bathed in vivid red paint, and splashed with dappled sunlight. I eventually learned that the sunglasses featured in this ad represent a fashion-inspired technology product known as “Spectacles.” It is marketed to young people, encouraging them to make ten-second videos with a tiny camera embedded in the frame, and then upload these videos to social media media app “Snapchat.” The circle on the left corner of the sunglasses is the lens of this video camera, while the circle at right lights up and rotates to warn others that they are being recorded. The model’s massive fingers are presumably triggering a video. (A sampling of video clips made with these “Spectacles” can be seen on YouTube. They fall far short of the product’s ambitious title.)

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Phil Douglis01-Jun-2017 22:43
A very perceptive choice of words, Rose. The definition of "voyeur" is "a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity." This ad, with its vivid red background and its enormous, partially parted red lips, is obviously intended to express a lascivious feeling. The product encourages voyeurism. So much so, that its inventors have had to install a "warning light" that rotates when the camera is rolling.
sunlightpix31-May-2017 22:42
"Spectacular" Makes everybody a voyeur.
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