The idealized version of the American suburb has spread around the world and can be found in nearly every country. The banality of the spread has been ignored by artists, at least that’s the feeling of Martin Adolfsson who set out to document this changing global landscape. For example, it’s hard to figure out where the above photo was taken.
In the book Suburbia Gone Wild, you can see the varying takes on sameness throughout the world. It’s a fascinating look at the spread of the suburbs. It’s good to see artists explore the global impact of hegemonic aesthetics and forcing us to ask: is this development the kind of development we want?
Swedish born turned New York City native; photographer Martin Adolfsson has shifted the focus of the camera lens from conventional portraits to dynamic vivid impressions of the urban upper middle class. Having noticed that artists had failed to address the changing panorama of economic shifts all over the world, Adolfsson decided to highlight the issue of social metamorphosis through an innovative array of environmental portraits.
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The eight countries featured represented “the dream of American Suburbia that is being copied and pasted and sprinkled with some Hollywood stardust†(Adolfsson). Additionally, with the conscious choice to omit “all these traces of signs and different languages and peopleâ€, Adolfsson has effortlessly encapsulated the uniform homogeneousness between these global hubs.