“I have always been interested in the little details that make up the routines and rituals of modern life, finding magical moments in the mundane.” So says photographer Brian Ulrich, who took that approach in his “Copia” project, which began in 2001 when Americans were encouraged to take to the malls to boost the post-9/11 economy, “thereby equating consumerism with patriotism,” as he observes. The project, which spread to other countries, documents not only the everyday activities of shopping pictured on these pages, but also “the economic, social and political implications of commercialism and the roles we play in self-destruction, overconsumption and as targets of marketing and advertising,” he says. His candid images are shot with a camera outfitted with a waist-level viewfinder. “I can capture lost excitement and overwhelmed, subsumed moments while being unnoticed myself,” says Ulrich, 34. “The large-scale photographs [final prints are as large as 40 by 50 inches] allow viewers to stop and notice, with a distanced perspective, familiar places and things.”
