Brave New World, 2025 (statement) 

photograph / object

I began this project after hearing that a casino might be built in Coney Island.
Before any construction, I met a Ukrainian immigrant who has spent the past nine years sweeping the beach with a metal detector—gambling daily with luck, tides, and time. He runs a YouTube channel documenting his finds, often layering the objects he recovers into dense, almost devotional compositions for his video thumbnails. I appropriated this visual language and photographed him using only the objects he found that day, translating his own aesthetic of accumulation into a portrait. His search for value felt like a quiet precursor to the larger speculative fantasy being sold to the city.

From this encounter, I designed 200 casino tokens for a fictional casino. Each token bears his face, along with references to Coney Island, The Coney (the casino that was promised but never built), and Brave New World. Each token is sold and circulates through a tripartite system: 30% to me, 30% to the scavenger, and 40% to a speculative investment pool.
If the pool gains value, buyers may claim 50% of the profit; if it loses, nothing returns. Each buyer also receives a Certificate of Honor, marking their entry into this unstable economy.