Statement ersatz |’er,säts; -,zäts; er’zäts| –adjective 1. Serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial. –noun 2. An artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute. This work examines artificial features that are incorporated into publicly accessible spaces: commercial, corporate, and institutional, constructed environments in an attempt to mitigate or lessen the effect of structures that, while functional, are essentially cold flat featureless boxes. This collection seeks to draw the viewer’s attention to the presence of these ersatz elements. The Institutional Spaces Series – In the institutional spaces series, I began photographing campuses of universities determined by specific predetermined statistics. Such factors such as a school population, campus acreage, year it was founded, religious affiliation, government funding, and the surrounding population density have created a pattern I follow to find harsh architecture and an atmosphere in which ersatz elements are placed to humanize such structures. Click To Continue