Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day and Labour Day have long provided opportunities for retailers to promote flash sales and special offers. Television commercials, discount coupons and aerial banners — every strategy is deployed to convince us to buy. Weekly flyers are no exception. I chose this format in order to dismantle its mechanisms.

Consisting of four pages, including a central double spread, Circulaire proposes inexpensive gardening clothes meant for enjoying sunny days. Substantial discounts (up to 50%), loyalty cards (“The Program”) and familiar marketing strategies are here repeated and amplified.

Created using photographs of anonymous individuals, Circulaire combines the fixed poses and forced smiles of people facing the camera with the stock slogans of promotional brochures. Eating, smiling, greeting and worrying merely repeat what the images already communicate, blocking any new interpretation.

The shift from one language to another relies on literal translation, ignoring the different meanings words may carry, much like the awkward translations often found in bilingual advertising flyers.

“Save. Live Better.”, proclaims the slogan, as though happiness were always a matter of money.