Welcome to Cardboard Box Office – our homemade creations of some of your favorite movie scenes built from some of our favorite domestic junk. The project began after finding that we had accumulated both a lot of cardboard boxes (due to moving to a new country) and a baby (due to giving birth). With our social lives drastically altered we decided to find a way to make some of those housebound weekends a little more fun. The costumes, props, and sets in Cardboard Box Office are created entirely out of everyday household items, toys, cardboard, and three individuals slowly losing their sanity. Enjoy!
Due to the current economic, social and cultural crisis in The United States of America today, I have decided to do a photographic project consisting of a series of studio portraits of superhero and celebrity impersonators that live and work in the city of Los Angeles. Most of them unemployed Americans, they decided to suit up with their costumes and hit the streets, animate parties and events in efforts to make ends meet. Making them pose in their costumes against a colorful backdrop, I ask them to manifest feelings of genuine sadness – honest emotions that are a consequence of our current times. The result is a somber, striking visual image that contradicts the iconic nature of strength and moral righteousness typical in American superhero and celebrity imagery. Creating the illusion that Superman does exist – that he too was fallible and affected by America’s downturn.
Saul of the Cubacigar company repairs the largest cigar in the world at the Pipe and Tobacco museum of Sint Niklaas on November 27, 2008 in Brussels, Belgium. The cigar is 6.4 meters long, weighs 460 kilos and is made of approximately 9900 tobacco leaves. (Photo by Mark Renders/Getty Images)