For her series "Free Sitting", Nora Herting infiltrated a portrait studio in a JC Penney department store in Ohio:
Images programmed to be evidence of happiness or prosperity become painful, ugly or embarrasing, possibly revealing something unseen before. As Andre Tarkovsky wrote of bringing audiences through an experience in film, "hideousness, then truth." In addition, Herting embarked on this undercover project for a more simple reason, perhaps put most succintly in the famous first line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
(Image: "Carnation", Nora Herting)
The Dish 