How to Win Friends and Influence People

At a young age, it was instilled in Erik Schubert that the mythology of Dale Carnegie s classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People was one that predicted success and happiness in life. The book was widely published and accepted by business people and corporate planners all over the world, including Schubert s father. Borrowing this infamous title as the starting point for his first artist book, Schubert considers how our appetite for success shapes our visual world. His photographs depict lonely interiors, defective products, and studies of ephemera culled from expositions, infomercial sets, and the family home. Schubert s photographic exploration of the corporate vernacular elicits a dark humor, of fruitless desperation. Pre-packaged business attire, scuffed carpets, and uncanny corporate tableaus paint a portrait of an underlying irony a world built on reputation and charisma, at the edges of catastrophe.