Thousands of snaps of one supermarket and its customers

One supermarket, one man, thousands of faces and 2067 images make up Danish photographer Simon Hoegsberg’s The Grocery Store Project. Simon tells us that over a year and a half, he patiently stationed himself atop a bike rail in front of the same Copenhagen supermarket, snapping away as people walked in and out; all the while kissing, pondering, smoking, chatting on the phone or doing any number of things we do without really thinking about it. From the whopping total of 97,000 an edit of 2067 were selected and arranged in a grid. While it may just look like a sort of dingy Tetris or an unhelpful map, on closer inspection you notice that within each sequence, we see the same face – sometimes serene, sometimes flustered, sometimes downright miserable. It feels eerie in its demonstration that while time ticks and our lives fly by, we do the same things, we’re the same person, just popping to the shops.

“The Grocery Store Project provides an opportunity to study how we humans present ourselves to the world, consciously and unconsciously, in the present moment and over time,” says Simon. “It’s a visual celebration of a life form that does its best to bloom and to create the perfect conditions for itself, relentlessly, despite all challenges, setbacks, and the destruction it constantly runs into. Seen from space, one could argue that humanity is a great piece of art, full of patterns that emerge and disappear. The Grocery Store Project is a humble attempt to praise the artwork and ponder its unfathomable nature.”