Shauna Frischkorn/Art & Activism

Shauna Frischkorn received her MFA in photography from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Time Magazine, AdBusters, and Mother Jones Magazine and exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States, including The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; The Print Center, Philadelphia; Jen Bekman Gallery, New York, NY; and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY. Her work is in the collections of Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; and the Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, WA. Frischkorn’s photographs deal with popular culture in everyday life.

Fast Food workers serve our food, day-in and day-out while wearing conspicuous corporate uniforms, with all the anonymity associated with their low-status "McJobs." My subjects are just kids—strangers that I meet while they are on the job. I invite them to my studio to be photographed in their uniforms. I purposefully create an ironic yet historical dialogue between my subjects and Renaissance portraiture. Historically, the portrait's role was to immortalize the wealthy—to celebrate the individual. Conversely, my subjects have a difficult time earning a living wage. Transplanted from their work environment, they look vulnerable yet dignified as they peer from behind their visors and into my camera. Although they are dressed like thousands of other workers, if you look close, you can see their nobility.