In late November, 2008, shortly after the economic crisis and Black Friday, the largest shopping day of the year, photographer and curator John Saponara was perplexed by the pervasive negativity surrounding consumer culture. "For me," says Saponara, "this lent itself to a weird vision of a dystopian society where consumers fight it out over cheap flat screen's and X-box's." That same year, Jdimytai Damour, a temporary security guard at a Walmart on Long Island was trampled to death in a shopping stampede the morning after Thanksgiving. After discussions with Joerg Colberg and photographer Nina Berman about this senseless death and its loss in the shuffle of a 24-hour news cycle, Saponara launched Picture Black Friday, an annual call to photographers to create a visual document and interpretation of the day each year. Although Saponara never expected to convince people to completely stop shopping on Black Friday, he hoped the project would raise awareness of what he, and many see as its frivolity and emptiness. "I think the work that was made for Picture Black Friday held a mirror to the country to show them what was happening." He says. "While I never expected to get people to completely stop shopping on Black Friday, I do think it raised awareness." The annual call, which ran from 2009-2014 was juried by photo editors, curators and photographers including Amy Stein, Stephen Frailey, Brian Ulrich, Liz Lapp, Ruben Natal San-Miguel and Joerg Colberg. "I pulled together a few photo people I know within the industry," says Saponara, "whom I felt represented a good cross-section of photography, to judge the images that were submitted and off we went." While the project has been on hold since 2014, we've culled together a look-back to some of the strongest Black Friday images to help keep his tradition alive.
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