After my trip to Brighton Beach, I decided to recreate the feeling that I had when I was there and translate it into a physical object. When I visited the grocery stores at Brighton Beach, I noticed that everything on the packaging was written entirely in Russian with one descriptive word about the product written in English. This is because most residents of the small neighborhood don’t speak English very well.
For my project, I did the reverse of what I saw and made a mock food box of crackers to then bring back to Brighton Beach and photograph next to the Russian boxes to contrast not only the two languages but the two cultures.
The box is made out of felt which I stitched with embroidery thread and then stapled to an old cereal box to give it some structure. I took the box to the store, photographed it, then edited the white balance and saturation in PhotoShop.