Selections from a series "Wok the Dog" - The series is an examination our relationship with our food; where and how we purchase them.
In modernized society where majority of family purchases their food from super markets, they are distanced from the idea that the meat purchased was once apart of an living breathing animal.
In the name of progress and industry, we have given up our connection to that which sustains us.
The series documents markets in developing countries to show the contrast and bring awareness to what our food once was, to gain a greater sense of the karmic price of our meals.
Charlie Grosso, a Chinese American woman with a male Italian name, was born in 1979 in Taipei, Taiwan. Educated in Taipei until the age of 11 when family tragedy put her in a shipping crate to Los Angeles to live with her estranged Aunt. She received her for formal education at University of Southern California receiving a BA in Theater Design. She declined a full scholarship for a MFA at Boston University and also SUNY Purchase in order to pursuit her artistic vision. She learned her photographic craft by apprenticing with many well-known commercial photographers including Jay Maisel.
Grosso has shot for a variety of Advertising and Editorial clients, including Wine Spectator, Reed Elsevier, 411 Publishing, Arts District Citizen, Z. Cavericci, JammFactory and Zinc. Her work has been nominated several time and named as an award finalist for CEBA Award in 2005 and for LA County Metropolitan Transit Authority?s 2006 Neighborhood Poster Project. She is scheduled for her first exhibition for ?The Market? at the LA Art Core in the fall of 2008.
Influenced by Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Sebastiao Salgado, Sylvia Plath and her own experience as an outsider. Grosso?s work has a sense of spontaneity but studied. The images plead to be looked at again and through every viewing the viewer discovers a different dimension. Grosso?s work is plagued with ruthless beauty and subtle understanding of the most improbably things.
