A window display at Tiffany’s shows the eye of Lady Liberty, likely chosen for her pantone color match on the brand’s telltale green. A potent symbol of American ideals, she represents the promise of a better life. Here she is employed to sell diamonds.

Extracted from the statue and magnified, the eye communicates many different possible emotions. It may be sadness, ferocity, strength, or all-knowing vision projecting back from the frame. Her brow feels like an impending storm. A ring floats uncomfortably in front of her iris, like a hovering gnat. This American dream is poised, sparkling with pure wealth. But the diamond’s shadow seems to pierce her eye.

Brian Ulrich’s photographs place the viewer in front of very high end shop windows. In this way, he is intentionally recreating some of the discomfort that is built into these spaces. The tableaus in the window displays can be cryptic or confusing. They ask ​“Do you understand the symbols? Are you part of this club?” Ulrich works to highlight this exchange and question its value.

A display in a Beverly Hills store riffs on Damien Hurst’s famous diamond encrusted skull, (which sold for around 100 million.) Extreme exclusivity in the art world becomes intertwined with the fuel of desire in luxury commerce. Recurring themes of death show up in the modern aesthetic of wealth, and Ulrich picks up on this strange overlap. It is a visual language built of sharp edges, danger, metal, and empty space. Immortality is the one of the few things that money cannot buy. If death can be covered in diamonds, can a person usurp some of its power?

Ulrich looks at the American pursuit of luxury and its promise to deliver an elevated lifestyle, but elevation can also equal isolation. He presents an empty store, a locked safe, opaque sunglasses, people with expensive clothing alone in exclusive spaces where few are allowed. He combines these pictures with a series of houses that are made to look like castles. These homes, hemmed in walls and motes, become their own sequestered fiefdoms.

This castle structure in Chevy Chase, MD is only the gatehouse to a larger mansion. It’s also the only part still standing, as the mansion was demolished in 1957 when the owner was unable to maintain it.

When the cycle of continuous consumption is prioritized and even glorified, then destruction becomes a necessary part of the system. In order to make way for the next thing, people will destroy what was there before.

- Mia Dalglish + Lisa Woodward

See more of Brian’s work HERE