Life Of Pinky (2012)

I was born in the late seventies. As such, I don’t fit neatly into the categories that historians and anthropologists place on generations; too young to truly be considered part of “Generation X”, and too old for “Generation Y”. I seem to have been born with one foot firmly planted in each category while never exactly fitting into either. As a child I was witness to the big boom in video game consoles—from Atari to Nintendo to Sega—and I can remember a time when the personal computer was a novelty and we were warned not to eat, drink, or breathe too heavily near one. The Internet came along when I was in high school and was continually innovated throughout my college years. Now, video game consoles have capabilities that would have been unimaginable in my youth, the desktop computer is going out of style, and smartphones (a term that  wasn’t even in common usage ten years ago) keep us connected to a constant, fast, and easily-accessible stream of information, entertainment, and social media. This postmodern world has developed at an ever-accelerating pace, and I think the unique timing of my birth has helped me to keep up with it all as I have aged. 

I often look back with a certain degree of nostalgia on those early, most formative years of my life. However, nostalgia usually gives way to the realization that all of those early influences are still with me, and therefore just as much a part of who I am at this particular point in time as they were when I was a child. I would not be who I am if Tōru Iwatani had not developed Pac-Man, if Hasbro had not decided to market their toys through TV cartoon tie-ins like Transformers and He-Man, or if George Lucas and Gene Rodenberry had not created their respective franchises. Now and then it occurs to me that, as I go about my everyday “grown-up” mundane activities (paying bills, grocery shopping, commuting to work, etc.), Optimus Prime, Mario, Turbo Teen, Worf, and plenty more characters just like them are right there with me. In recent years I have begun to search for ways to visually represent this philosophy. I think this series of images comes very close. 

“Life of Pinky” began as a spare-time project I worked on just to keep my photo manipulation skills nimble. I would scour the Internet for the specific variety of photos I needed to craft each scenario. I then built each image by digitally collaging together elements of those photos, paying careful attention to keeping the integration of elements as seamless as possible. As I worked, the series seemed to coalesce into a cohesive narrative; a peek—a vignette—into the contemporary life of “Pinky,” one of the four bad-guy ghosts in the video game Pac-Man. No longer living in his (or her?) wild and exciting past chasing Pac-Man around the maze, Pinky is seen performing the mundane necessities of “grown-up” existence. Is Pinky happy living this new life? Has Pinky merely settled into a holding pattern? Does Pinky secretly resent this suburban life and long to return to those rowdy youthful days? I love how the lack of expression on Pinky’s face refuses to give the viewer a firm answer.