Paho Mann

American, b. 1978, Snowflake, Arizona; lives and works in Denton, Texas

Since 2001, Paho Mann has observed that mass-produced buildings and containers such as medicine cabinets and junk drawers are unique to their owners. From 2004 to 2006, he put together one of his most ambitious projects to date entitled Re-inhabited Circle Ks. While pursuing his master’s degree from Arizona State University in Tempe, Mann noticed how defunct Circle K stores across the city had been reused for various new businesses. Researching telephone directories from the 1970s, before the Circle K company had fallen on hard times and had to divest many of its properties, he visited all of the listed locations and photographed each from the same vantage point and time of day. These systematic portraits are reminiscent of the typologies of Bernd and Hilla Becher, who photographed industrial architecture, such as water towers, mining operations, and grain elevators. However, Mann, who is currently an assistant professor of photography at the University of North Texas, is interested in the specificity of individual customization rather than the anonymous structures of the Bechers. The artist has said that he was motivated to undertake this project because “these buildings do not show a linear progression of the corporatization and homogenization of suburbia, but rather serve as evidence of a more circular system—a system driven by a delicate negation between same and different, between complicated sets of actions and choices that shape our built environment.” Mann’s work has been shown at institutions such as the Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe; the Tucson Museum of Art; and the Albuquerque Center for Contemporary Art.