Martin Adolfsson's "Suburbia Gone Wild"

Swedish born turned New York City native; photographer Martin Adolfsson has shifted the focus of the camera lens from conventional portraits to dynamic vivid impressions of the urban upper middle class. Having noticed that artists had failed to address the changing panorama of economic shifts all over the world, Adolfsson decided to highlight the issue of social metamorphosis through an innovative array of environmental portraits.

tarting in Bangkok in 2006 and having received various grants in his final year at the School of Visual Arts in 2008, Adolfsson embarked on a five-year project titled Suburbia Gone Wild, an intriguing new documentation of the emerging upper middle class among new economic centers scattered across the globe. Noting the quick establishment of middle classes within the last two decades, Adolfsson examined how the influx of money had shifted the outlook of not only the citizens but also the city’s architectural ‘suburbs’.

The eight countries featured represented “the dream of American Suburbia that is being copied and pasted and sprinkled with some Hollywood stardust” (Adolfsson). Additionally, with the conscious choice to omit “all these traces of signs and different languages and people”, Adolfsson has effortlessly encapsulated the uniform homogeneousness between these global hubs.

A fascinating exploration of a plethora of cultures, continents and classes, Suburbia Gone Wild has been heralded as a pioneering benchmark for globalism that forces spectators alike to halt in such a fast paced evolving world. From Bangkok, Bangalore, Cairo, Singapore, Sao Paolo, Moscow, Johannesburg and Mexico City – allow Mr Adolfsson to navigate you through the chaotic beauty of Suburbia Gone Wild.