Kristin Anderson
In this series, called Generation Alpha, I explore surrealism, the uncanny, and how humans of different generations relate to the state of the world. It was begun during the pandemic, when old photographs I had been collecting for years with no real purpose suddenly revealed their meaning to me.
In his essay on the uncanny in 1919, Freud defined it as the idea that something can be familiar and yet alien at the same time. He called it ‘that class of frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar’. I related the pandemic and other issues currently facing the world to universal fears that follow us from childhood - a reminder of the fact that we can’t control life and that there is only one fact about our future that can ever truly be known. It was the monster under the bed daring us to look, the shadow side of the world and of our own natures.
I thought of how the latest generation, called by some Generation Alpha (born 2010-2025), would be shaped as the first generation to be born entirely within the 21st century and everything it contains. How might that be different and yet the same as the human experience of past generations? By combining past figures and elements with current landscapes and vice versa, I attempt to craft images that speak to a surrealistic interpretation of the times, finding magic and strange beauty by combining the familiar in an unexpected way.
