Anti-Gravity Goat
The Anti-Gravity Goat Zine is an exploration of American consumerism in the post–World War II and early Cold War era, juxtaposed with the profound hardships occurring simultaneously in other parts of the world. This jarring contrast was evident across nearly every magazine I examined from that period—though typically separated by different spreads or sections. I began merging these starkly different subjects into small, note card-sized compositions to emphasize the disconnect, or perhaps the privileged obliviousness, of American consumer culture. From there, I combined these mini-compositions into full spreads and manipulated them further using a physical scanner, blending the themes more viscerally through distortion and layering. What struck me most was the profound difference between the indulgent, colorful marketing advertisements and the grim realities they were so often printed alongside. I sourced imagery from Life magazine and other publications from the 1940s and ’50s, allowing the visual tension between optimism and suffering to speak for itself.
