In 2001 in response to a national call for citizens to bolster the American economy through shopping, Ulrich began a project to document consumer culture. This project, Copia, is a series of large scale photographs of shoppers, retail spaces, and displays of goods. Initially focused on big-box retail establishments and shoppers, the series expanded to include thrift stores, back rooms of retail businesses, art fairs and most recently empty retail stores and dead malls.
Ulrich works with a combination of 4×5 large format and medium format cameras,[4] and also incorporates found objects as sculpture, juxtaposed with his photographs on gallery walls.[5]
Publications
Publications by Ulrich
Is This Place Great or What. New York: Aperture; Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011. ISBN 978-1597111928.[6]
Closeout: Retail Relics and Ephemera. Anderson Gallery, 2013. With an interview with and an essay by Will Steacy.
Publications with contributions by Ulrich
MP3: Midwest Photographers Project. New York: Aperture, 2006. ISBN 978-1683951506.
^"Brian Ulrich" Archived 2017-07-24 at the Wayback Machine, Lost at E Minor, 10 September 2008. Retrieved on 2 August 2015.
^"Brian Ulrich, Is This Place Great or What: Artifacts and Photographs @Julie Saul", Collector Daily, New York, 6 April 2012. Retrieved on 1 August 2015.
^"Is big beautiful? Brian Ulrich's decaying shopping malls - in pictures". The Guardian. 11 November 2011. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-09-08.
^"UBS 12 x 12: New Artists/New Work: Brian Ulrich". MCA. Retrieved 2020-09-08.
^"Brian Ulrich: Copia". 21 August 2009.
^"Results – Search Objects – eMuseum".
^Department, JCCC Digital. "Richard Ross and Brian Ulrich". www.jccc.edu. Retrieved 2020-09-08.