Pascale Pressicaud: Stereography of Celebration: Perspective and virtual happiness

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Stereography of Celebration: Perspective and virtual happiness (part 2)

Pascale Pressicaud

Stereography of Celebration: part 1 | part 2 | part 3

Continued from part 1…

With this first image, I aim to illustrate my arrival in Florida and the beginning of my peregrinations throughout the land of suburbia and the world of Disney. I wanted to mark this moment with one of the many carrousels at Orlando airport. This is where I was able to collect all my travel gear after we had landed.

Carrousel for luggage collection – Orlando Airport

Despite the lack of fellow travellers on this image, there are over 32 millions people transiting through the airport every year to reach Disney World, an average of 90,000 a day.

With this photograph, I have tried to locate my journey to Celebration literally and in the style of photographers Stephen Shores and William Eggleston. Not only do I admire their work, I figured out that my odyssey in nostalgia land required some vintage touch. So here is one of the few retrostyled images that aim to illustrate the text.

Route 192 – from the airport to Celebration

Take route 192 from the airport to reach Disney World! In technical terms, I was trying to identify an element in the landscape that would allow the rendering of relief expected from a three-dimensional image.

Water tanks are a common feature of Americana. They belong to the landscape as well as the collective imaginary. They usually indicate the proximity of a small town giving its name away. This one is posted on the boundaries of Celebration.

Water tank

Multiple reflections with the superimposition of unrelated subjects, be it their difference in size or function, offer new perspectives. With this photography, I invite the observer to meditate on the visual perception of the world and the reality that it generates.

Reflections

I have named this photograph after Sam Mendes’ movie. In both cases, the idea of happiness is suggested through a metaphor, a rose called American Beauty, hybrid developed in 1875.

American Beauty

In the realm of middle class suburban life, happiness and social achievement are closely identified. A dream home in an affluent location with its well watered front lawn and massifs of full-fledged roses framed by a white-picked fence, are prerequisite to symbolise social achievement and, therefore, should be translated in terms of happiness. Suburbia, with its well-maintained roses and white-picked fences are a recurring theme in David Lynch’s movies also symbolising the American White Flight.

Again, it is important to exhibit all the appearances of happiness or social achievement and this can be performed by displaying well maintained floral arrangements.

A mansion façade and iris

To fit the profile in suburbia, the appearance at the back of the house should be consistent with that of the front. In Celebration, this is one of the many rules established by Disney.

Back alleys

This is an authentic vintage Pontiac, not an ersatz added to the landscaped garden. It is also a metaphor illustrating financial power, a prerequisite to grant a living in Celebration and maintain such vehicles in their original aspect and on the road.

Red vintage Pontiac

Another image containing what I regard as being a sign of happiness and a symbol to embody the American White Flight: a bicycle resting on a white picket fence. It is also a reference to the American series « Murder she wrote » where Angela Landsbury incarnates a perfectly happy writer detective.

Bicycle

She follows her investigations from a dream home surrounded by beautiful roses and a white picket fence. She does not drive a car and uses her bicycle to meet her many friends in a pretty small-town near Cape Cod in the Boston area where the original pioneers, all white folks, landed. As Marc Augé observes “what could be more realistic and, in a sense, more informative about life in the United States than [..] American TV series?” (Augé, 1995:32)

Here, I invite the observer to meditate on the concept of happiness.

Happiness

I have left Celebration to explore the vicinity and I have discovered places which led me to believe that happiness can be captured outside Disney’s dream factory.

Bigmart my circumvolutions outside Celebration

…these images are other examples, with different features, but still encouraging the production of happiness.

General store

A vintage motel swimming pool

Ice cream parlour

This image at dusk, signals the end of my journey and exploration of suburbia at the doors of Disney’s kingdom. I have picked the movie house modernist twin towers because they incarnate the past within which are trapped all the pretty small-towns of the American dream.

Celebration movie house

Recent Articles:

Stereography of Celebration: Perspective and virtual happiness (part 2)

Pascale Pressicaud

Stereography of Celebration: part 1 | part 2 | part 3

Continued from part 1…

Continue to part 3…

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