State Sponsored Collage reexamines and recontextualizes the early 20th century American state-sponsored ethnographic photography from The Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. The collages investigate how the organizations used photographic tropes and stereotypes to represent its subjects in the light they wanted them to be perceived in, propagandizing the common folk and the military industrial complex of America. In turn I am using compositional tropes to poke fun and shed light on photographic issues of representation and the relationship between photographer/organization and subject. The creation of new collage from the archival media can create space for another perspective on the material, examining it with modern eyes. The collages look at the shortcomings of the mediums, namely the representation and reciprocity of the people within the state sponsored ethnographic works, and examines the light in which the state wished its people and military to be seen.
