Money is an idea, a belief system, a construct we collectively agree upon. But at its core, what is money?

In What is Money, tho?, I explore this question by stripping currency down to its simplest form—reducing it to the objects we interact with daily. Buttons, earrings, paper clips, coffee beans, cranberries, oats—each of these items holds value, if only we choose to see it.

My daughter values cranberries over coins. To her, they hold immediate worth—something tangible, desirable, and useful. I, too, find myself exchanging coins for coffee beans, prioritizing my daily caffeine addiction over a symbol of wealth. These small, personal choices reflect a deeper truth: value is subjective.

By capturing these objects in the aesthetic of stock photography, I then processed and photoshopped them into an 8-bit visual style, highlighting the tension between perception and function. The stock image suggests commercial worth, while the pixelated effect reduces the object to its most essential form. This digital simplification mirrors the abstraction of money itself—an exchange of one thing for another.

Through this work, I invite viewers to reconsider their own relationships with value, exchange, and necessity. If history has taught us that anything can be money, then what do we truly value?