Beautiful selection of black light photographs showing the finger prints from goods made in China. Slightly unnerving quality to them.
When we purchase objects adorned with “Made in China” stickers, we rarely stop to consider what that means. We tend to regard the toys, tools, and electronics we buy as being absent of history. Yet even the most mass-produced of objects can tell a story, if you know how to look for it. In an effort to collapse the distance between producer and consumer, the photographer Lorena Turner purchased knickknacks that had been made in China and sold in the United States; she then dusted them for finger prints and shot them under black lights. “Fingerprints don’t reveal identity intuitively,” says Turner, “but they do communicate a human touch, that someone had a physical connection and maybe even an emotional connection to an object.”
What follows is a selection from Lorena Turner’s “Made in China.”