On one of Spencer Ostrander's early visits to Times Square, the rain began to fall. The people in the crowd, suddenly draped in plastic, were transformed into abstract, brilliant reflections of the massive advertising that surrounded them. Designed to entrap the consumer with illusions of status, the good life, and happiness by product, the vast LED light boards turned visitors into walking ads for MTV, Coca-Cola, and The Lion King. And when the flickering LEDs hit his camera's sensor, they created streaks of color and lines that don't exist, but are part of the photos, a technical mirage that perfectly suits Ostrander's subject-the empty allure of late capitalism. Moving among the people with his camera, Ostrander began to see sorrow, tenderness, despair-a hidden story that starts to reveal itself in his photographs.

Over the course of a decade, photographer Bonnie Briant collected everything she saw, resulting in an extensive catalogue of photographs. Her first monograph, Lump Sum Lottery is quiet and subtle selection of images produced during those ten years. Self-reflexive and diaristic in nature, Lump Sum Lottery represents the many idiosyncratic, intimate moments that make up a life—the in-between spaces, the moments you feel but can’t necessarily put into words; time passing in a wild rush, with everything changing yet, somehow, staying exactly the same. The photographs become personal touchstones, a mode of organising, controlling (to an extent), and collecting the world. Each picture stands alone, infused with its own story, but quietly come together, like a steady stream, as a whole.