“Hello, friend” is a salutation often used by John Freyer. There is something intentionally approachable and folksy about this greeting; it calls back to an era of community and neighborhood that seems to be missing in Our increasingly short hand culture. His compendium website temporama.com lists its function as "archival preservation.” Beyond photography parlance, there is a sense that John Freyer is holding on to a complex history of social rituals and customs and ensuring their proper documentation. He is a collector, a chronologist, an archivist, an oral historian, and a folk researcher implementing a variety of formats ranging from the kindly analog to the comprehensive digital, the tangible and the abstract.

His attentive curator's eye hits on the everyday sky high shelving units of Wal-Mart. Cherry picking the ultimate selection of quotidian objects to best represent a culture of consumption. Can we actually purchase what we need, when it comes down to it? Would we recognize it when we saw it?

Discussing via Skype the specific images produced for his Light Work residency, John mentioned that they felt like "provisions for a barbecue that was never coming.” A sort of postponed celebration. Don't the Boy Scouts advise to "Be Prepared"? These images subject inanimate objects to the typified world of the portrait session, lending them personhood or personality. They remind us what we should be commemorating and how we might best go about it.

Some of John Freyer's artistic fodder: collective memory, corporate branding, object culture, oral history, commodity evaluation, talisman investigation, value systems, the second-hand economy, mass production, technology, domesticity, the gift economy, Social anthropology, Social practice, and performative installation.

Additionally: corn on the cob, apple pie, Bob's Big Boy, gingham picnic blankets, Soda fountains, cheeseburgers deluxe, pizza pie, road trips, yard sales, tire planters, Sears Portrait Studios, fried chicken, tailgate parties, Polaroid, Celebration Florida, Waffle House, free refills, the red and yellow condiment vessels at a hot dog stand, cornbread, bacon bits, egg creams, Brillo boxes, backyard barbecue, Seersucker trousers, Ray-Bans, the American Dream, an honest dollar, a Coleman lantern, a chip off the old block, and a piece of the action.

Here are conversations had while pumping gas, standing in the check outline, sitting at the diner counter, queueing for lottery tickets, filling a prescription, in trains, on Skype, at beer gardens, in university auditoriums, and while arguing over tchotchkes at IKEA. Identifiable arenas beyond the museum realm where everyday transactions and interactions occur.

These to me are the refined talents of a photographer expanded into many other arenas. These are the things we do: bargain, shop, collect, organize, itemize, compartmentalize, barbecue, take road trips, patronize diners, inventory possessions, spring clean, raise children, prepare dinner, evaluate our accomplishments, and tally Our progress. This work is a form of civic monument to us all.

Christine Hill

Christine Hill is the Berlin-based proprietor of Volksboutique and professor and chair of Media,Trend & Public Appearance at the Bauhaus-University in Weimar. Volksboutique.org

John Freyer lives in Richmond, VA, and completed his residency at Light Work in March 2013. www.temporama.com