Janet Delaney – Too Many Products Too Much Pressure
Deadbeat Club is pleased to present TOO MANY PRODUCTS, TOO MUCH PRESSURE, a new exhibition of photography works by JANET DELANEY.
On the occasion of the release of her new book, Too Many Products, Too Much Pressure, photographer Janet Delaney will present a selection of prints along a new, remastered version of her original video installation of this series.
In 1980, as a young photographer just beginning her MFA in San Francisco and developing a keen interest in documenting labor, Janet Delaney embarked for a week on the job with her soon-to-retire father, a beauty salesman in the greater Los Angeles area. The days are long and exhausting, but there is, in the incessant driving, carrying and chatting, a restless, pulsing energy streaming from Delaney’s photographs. Picturing the beauty parlors with a critical distance (she did, after all, grow up in a time of questioning constricted gender roles and capitalist consumer culture), using frontal, wide shots and often harsh flash, Delaney created a witty documentation of a day in the life of a salesman. Despite the photo-novella humor, Delaney came to see her father’s work under new light. All the tough business dealings, all the missed dinners and the Saturday meetings became a testament to his efforts to provide for his children what he himself had not received. The story, ultimately, became a testament to his love.
