FISH SCALE
FISH SCALE examines the visual culture surrounding illicit digital economies, presenting imagery sourced from over eight dark web marketplaces. The project focuses on photographic material used to advertise and authenticate cocaine bricks, objects circulated through encrypted networks where anonymity, trust, and visual branding converge in complex ways.
Each image depicts a carefully staged commodity: cocaine bricks stamped with logos, artworks, and watermarks that mimic the conventions of commercial advertising. Through a curated archive and analytical lens, FISH SCALE investigates the formal and semiotic properties of these images, considering how photography is deployed as a functional tool within underground e-commerce. The project is printed in greyscale using low-resolution reproductions, echoing the forensic aesthetics of police archives and law enforcement documentation. In doing so, it reflects on the uneasy intersections between image, evidence, and economy, where visual media becomes both proof and product.
Images compiled by lurker_signal_404 with the publication edited and produced by Sam Hutchinson
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FISH SCALE
FISH SCALE examines the visual culture surrounding illicit digital economies, presenting imagery sourced from over eight dark web marketplaces. The project focuses on photographic material used to advertise and authenticate cocaine bricks, objects circulated through encrypted networks where anonymity, trust, and visual branding converge in complex ways.
Each image depicts a carefully staged commodity: cocaine bricks stamped with logos, artworks, and watermarks that mimic the conventions of commercial advertising. Through a curated archive and analytical lens, FISH SCALE investigates the formal and semiotic properties of these images, considering how photography is deployed as a functional tool within underground e-commerce. The project is printed in greyscale using low-resolution reproductions, echoing the forensic aesthetics of police archives and law enforcement documentation. In doing so, it reflects on the uneasy intersections between image, evidence, and economy, where visual media becomes both proof and product.
Images compiled by lurker_signal_404 with the publication edited and produced by Sam Hutchinson
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Description
FISH SCALE examines the visual culture surrounding illicit digital economies, presenting imagery sourced from over eight dark web marketplaces. The project focuses on photographic material used to advertise and authenticate cocaine bricks, objects circulated through encrypted networks where anonymity, trust, and visual branding converge in complex ways.
Each image depicts a carefully staged commodity: cocaine bricks stamped with logos, artworks, and watermarks that mimic the conventions of commercial advertising. Through a curated archive and analytical lens, FISH SCALE investigates the formal and semiotic properties of these images, considering how photography is deployed as a functional tool within underground e-commerce. The project is printed in greyscale using low-resolution reproductions, echoing the forensic aesthetics of police archives and law enforcement documentation. In doing so, it reflects on the uneasy intersections between image, evidence, and economy, where visual media becomes both proof and product.
Images compiled by lurker_signal_404 with the publication edited and produced by Sam Hutchinson
