As Sandy had mentioned time after time, the first presentation is "free throw." The first time I saw the LBJ Museum covered in scaffolds, the way I felt about it changed. During my freshmen year, I had to write a paper about my favorite building on campus, and I automatically chose the LBJ Museum because of the way the space (interior and exterior) made me feel. Looking at it from the outside, I felt like I was in the presence of greatness. The architectural design is a true work of art, so that's what I thought about when walking around the exterior. To me, the interior was about the celebration of a man who was once an American president and not near as interesting as the exterior.

 
My political views have changed a lot since my freshmen year, due to people like Noam Chomsky, words like hegemony, and terms like manufacturing consent. So, when I saw the LBJ Museum in scaffolds, I felt like its appearance became a more fitting monument to the troubled man who was our 36th president.

Beyond LBJ the man, I started thinking about all of the different ways our culture glorifies these men through things like presidential libraries and museums, and how it makes us remember them. To me, the grandiose design of the museum represents the way we are “supposed” to remember the man who was once president. Seeing it covered in scaffolds, I thought more about the ways in which dominant ideologies are constructed to make us think about things (like our government) in ways that are far away from the truth.

I chose to photograph the building using a 4x5 view camera because I had intentions of making large prints. When I realized that I had no idea how to print large, I decided to make two slideshows.

In the first slideshow, I brought color into and out of a blurry image of the building to represent my struggle in understanding how systems of power and dominant ideologies work. The color represents the many times when I’ll feel like I’m on to an idea, but then it quickly fades away. The image stays blurry because if I’m on to an idea or not, I still can’t clearly see the structure that I’m trying to understand.

With the second slideshow, I wanted to use the scaffolds to symbolize the complexity of the American power structure in shaping the ways that we think about our nation’s history. Hegemony works at so many different levels in our culture that are invisible to the eye. I felt that the scaffolds were a great way to visualize the invisibleness of hegemony.