The Centurion is named for the moniker of the famed American Express Black Card, which was created in response to persistent rumors of its existence throughout the 1980s. This contemporary tale of the rendering of reality from urban myth is perhaps emblematic of a new Gilded Age – where illusion manifests itself as power through wealth. I have been creating photographs that examine the construction of desire and myth, and portray wealth as an aspiration, an enchantment, and a means to consolidate power. From store display windows where luxury objects function as precursors to screen culture, to hierarchical views of landscape and architecture, and to direct, performative portraiture, The Centurion questions the social, economic, and psychological effects of a system that defines success as plutonomy. Photography has a particular power to reveal what many in our culture are blind to, especially within the culture of privilege. The Centurion shows how commerce and consumption fuel irrational desires for power and envy, while also revealing the often frail mechanics of its construction, evident in the inherent loss of value of an expired credit card or the folly of a contemporary home built as architecture of defense. 

Brian Ulrich’s photographs portraying contemporary consumer culture are held by major museums and private collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; Eastman Museum; Getty Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum of Contemporary Photography; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; North Carolina Museum of Art; Margulies Collection; Bidwell Collection; and the Pilara Foundation Collection.

Ulrich has had solo exhibitions at the Eastman Museum; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the North Carolina Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Haggerty Museum of Art; the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art; the North Carolina Museum of Art; the Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; the Julie Saul Gallery; Galerie f5,6; and the Robert Koch Gallery. 

His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art; Pier 24 San Francisco; Art Institute of Chicago; the Walker Art Center; the Museum of Contemporary Photography; the San Diego Museum of Art; the Haifa Museum of Art; the Krannert Art Museum; the New York Public Library; the Carnegie Museum; the Aperture Foundation, among others. 

In 2009, Ulrich was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. The Aperture Foundation and the Cleveland Museum of Art collaborated to publish his first major monograph, “Is This Place Great or What”. The Anderson Gallery published the catalog Closeout: Retail, Relics and Ephemera. In 2026 FW: Books will publish The Centurion. 

He is currently a Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. 

Website

@brian_ulrich