Gallery: The strange world of America according to Phillip Toledano

Photographer Phillip Toledano believes that photographs should be like unfinished sentences and that there should always be space for questions. So make sure you list down all your queries as you browse through his installation project, "America The Gift Shop," which is being exhibited as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2010 -- check out our image gallery above.

The project reflects the foreign policy of the Bush/Cheney regime, in the funhouse mirrors of American commerce. The project premiered in the United States in October 2008 and asks a simple question -- what do we have to remind ourselves of the events of the last eight years?

CNNGo gets behind the mind of the man with the strange vision of the world's last superpower.

CNNGo: What was your inspiration behind America the Gift Shop?

Phillip Toledano: Eight years of failed policy, war for no reason, torture, lies, death of both Iraqi civilians and American soldiers; I could go on, but I think we've all heard it before.

CNNGo: You were born in London but live in New York now. What would you say is the most American thing about you?

Toledano: My belief in the possibility of everything.

CNNGo: Do you remember the first photo you took?

Toledano: Yes, I think it was a photograph of the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant in England. I must have been 8 or 9 at the time.

CNNGo: What's been the strangest thing/scene you've photographed?

Toledano: I did a gay porn photo shoot once. That was unusual. I also once spent the weekend dressed as a union soldier re-enacting the battle of Gettysburg.

CNNGo: Where's the strangest place you've ever had a creative idea?

Toledano: I have no clue. I don't go anywhere particularly strange, so my answer would be very boring. I can tell you the most recent idea I had occurred to me in an elevator, talking to a construction worker about something totally unrelated.

CNNGo: If you could photograph any famous person, living or dead, who would you pick and how would you shoot him/her?

Toledano: I'd shoot Picasso, but to be honest, I wouldn't really want to spend much time with the photography part -- I'd just hope that I'd be able to have a conversation with him.

CNNGo: If America really was one big gift shop, what souvenir would you buy from it before you leave?

Toledano: Enthusiasm and the phrase 'what have you got to lose’.

getting there

"America The Gift Shop" at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival
January 13-24, 10am to 10pm
ION Art Gallery, Level 4, ION Orchard
2 Orchard Turn, Singapore
www.singaporefringe.com