Bios and Brands – A documentary series on consumer identity and the self

This series began with Vanni Codeluppi’s essay Biocapitalismo — a study of how capitalism has expanded beyond economics into the biological, psychological, and emotional dimensions of human life. The photographs explore what that looks like on the ground: how people represent themselves, consume, and are consumed in return.

The selfie is the series’ recurring motif — not as a symbol of narcissism but as evidence of something more complex. When someone photographs themselves at the Forbidden City, in a Bangkok market, or outside a luxury boutique, they are doing something that Barbara Kruger identified in 1987: defining their worth through consumption and visibility. I shop therefore I am. The act of seeing becomes inseparable from the act of being seen.

I photograph luxury brands commercially and question consumer culture personally. These are not contradictions — they are the same curiosity applied in different directions. What does it mean to make something beautiful, to sell it, to want it, to photograph it? These images don’t answer that question. They ask it more carefully.

This series was made across China, Southeast Asia, and Europe between 2012 and 2018. It remains unfinished — the subject keeps expanding.