Mrs. Alesia Atolevna Markina is a Russian widow who wants to leave a suitcase full of cash on your doorstep. Grace Smith is a 24-year-old orphan who needs a husband so she can receive her inheritance. And Fagbemi Lateef is an attorney with $3.5 million he is required to get rid of fast. You are their only hope. All you must do is follow the simple steps outlined in the email, and you’ll be a hero well paid for your kindness.
We’ve all experienced the deluge of spam that inevitably fills our inboxes. Even our mobile phones are inundated with shady schemes and annoying advertising. While most of us immediately delete this digital detritus, Cristina De Middel devoured it, finding inspiration in each desperate cry for help and promise of instant wealth. De Middel uses a lot of imagination and a little dramatic staging to bring your junk mail to life in her series Poly-Spam, a handmade book published in September.
She became fascinated with the idea in 2009, when she couldn't stop wondering about the cryptic emails and the people who sent them. Using these ubiquitous messages as a script, De Middel creates fictitious tableaus of the sender’s dilemma---an elderly woman consumed with regret prepares to enter surgery, an African banker waits patiently to transfer a large fortune, a clairvoyant promises to speak of a surprising future. Each cinematic scene is both incredibly detailed and strangely artificial. The people, much like the emails, have a blank, sterile quality.
“Poly-Spam aims to build the robotic portrait of the senders, taking every single detail specified and translating it into images with special care in the dramatic ambient of the specific moment in which the email was sent,” De Middel writes in her artist statement.
The photographer works quickly when she stages her images, and shoots mostly in Spain. The models often are friends or people she met in the street. De Middel decided to travel to Senegal for the African emails, finding a real attorney and bank to set the scene. The locations add a level of authenticity to the imagined writers and their plight.
Though it seems unlikely anyone would fall for these schemes, there are people who reply. De Middel recognizes each message is intended to prey on our sympathy, our vanity, and, ultimately, our greed. In these scenarios, the noble hero will be amply rewarded.
“All of them [the emailers] have been entering my inbox for the last year, telling me incredible stories. They describe with all the details I need to realize that their situation is definitely dramatic and that they truly need my help,” De Middel writes. “By trying to awake both my mercy and my greed, they offer me the perfect business: cleaning my conscience and my financial situation at the same time.”
The photographer has known people who lost money from such scams. She attempted to correspond with several of her spammers, but struggled to keep the conversation going once they realized she wasn't going to send money. She was amused to find it took them a while to realize she was the wrong target, four or five emails usually exchanged before senders gave up. Regardless, the emails keep coming.
