‘A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped cloud of debris, smoke, and usually condensed water vapour resulting from a large explosion and that became the shape now inextricably associated with nuclear explosions.' 

CANDY CRUSH

The idea for the series was sparked by seeing a child enveloped in a mushroom cloud of spun sugar and seconds later confronted with a stick. The series of candid portraits and photographs of daily life and fairground ephemera -  cotton candy, face paint, plastic toys and fairground rides- reflecting on the 'substance' of modern existence. Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, in her book Dopamine Nation, describes how we are “living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting. .. The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering… She describes the smartphone as the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.' Milan Kundera in his novel 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', uses Friedrich Nietzsche's doctrine of Eternal Return to illustrate the philosophical concept of Lightness, when everything happens only once and so loses its “weight” and significance—hence the lightness of being.' The lightness associated with things happening only once can create the belief that life is fleeting and worthless, hence the 'lightness' becomes unbearable. In contrast, Nietzsche's doctrine of Eternal Return dictates that some things in existence recur endlessly. Human existence is 'heavy' because it stands fixed in a never ending cycle. Actions are repeated an infinite number of times, causing the 'heaviest of burdens’. The constant exposure to high -  dopamine stimuli rewires our brains and creates a culture of alienation and invisibility.  All around are signs of discontent. At an evening family fun run where children run through foam while running around a track, a boy scrawls FUCK OFF with pots of UV paint handed out before the race, his message sliding down his wrist with every lap, unseen except by me, silently acknowledging his bravery. 

And have you ever watched the expressions change in between the camera smiles on a fairground swing? 

*Candy Crush Saga is a free-to-play tile matching game released by Kingon April 12, 2012, originally for Facebook. In the game, players complete levels by swapping colored pieces of candy on a game board to make a match of three or more of the same color, eliminating those candies from the board and replacing them with new ones, which could potentially create further matches.  At its peak, the company was reportedly earning almost $1 million per day. Around 2014, over 93 million people were playing Candy Crush Saga, while revenue over a three-month period was over $493 million.Five years after its release on mobile, the Candy Crush Saga series has received over 2.7 billion downloads, and the game has been one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile apps in that time frame. As of September 2023, it had reached over $20 billion in lifetime revenue. Wikipedia