Search

James Baldwin's novel If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) takes the reader through a saga of injustice that finds a young black man in prison near Harlem in the 1970s. This is a love story—the lustful, playful kind—between Fony and Tish, intertwined with Tish's family's trust, which strives to keep the couple strong throughout his incarceration and her pregnancy. This is a devastating portrayal of a family that is armed with irony, grace, and intelligence but that still cannot protect the couple from the hate stacked against them. The young woman's narrative voice conveys the terror and the tenderness. The groans of painful histories, the sighs of joyful family communion, and the acute witnessings of a woman in Baldwin's novel are akin to the voices that resonate throughout Carrie Mae Weems's incisive photographic and multimedia work from the mid-1980s to the end of this current decade. My attraction to the intertwining trajectories of Weems's exquisite work compels me to consider the poetic strategies within her expansive documentary practice. Looking back to consummate projects that address social injustice and cultural violence primarily directed toward African American people allows an investigation into Weems's ingenious reformulations of the traditional means of documentary photography. Her rethinking gives renewed life to the core vitality of the genre: to teach, to warn, and to mourn. Weems's early approaches to documentary photographic strategies began in 1984, working from the early twentieth-century black Harlem photographers' tradition …

When Providence Healthcare won a legal challenge in May 2014 at British Columbia's Supreme Court to prescribe medically supervised heroin to two hundred and two of Vancouver's most severely addicted drug users, a firestorm lit up online. Many called it a positive step for harm reduction that would help keep addicts from engaging in crime and using potentially lethal street drugs. Others said it was shameful that taxpayers would be funding a program for drug users who "contribute nothing to society," according to one individual. Many had even more scathing things to say about heroin users. While heroin-assisted treatment programs have long been recognized as scientifically sound and cost-saving in countries across Europe such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark, this is the first time one has been offered outside of a clinical study in North America. Realizing how deeply divided the public was about heroin-assisted treatment, I suspected it was due to a lack of information. I wondered if documentary photography could play a role in educating people about compassionate, science-based treatment for drug users. I began planning a photo documentary project that I hoped would help humanize some of the long-term heroin users taking part in the Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness (SALOME). My intention was to help foster empathy toward vulnerable drug users and allow people to come to their own conclusions about heroin-assisted treatment. The scale of the heroin addiction Across Canada, as many as ninety thousand people (1) are addicted to heroin, according to Providence Healthcare. The New York Times has reported on a heroin "epidemic" sweeping across the United States. (2) Thousands of heroin users receive methadone and other forms of treatment. However, for some of the most chronic and vulnerable addicts, nothing has worked. "Ninety percent of the refractory people- the people who've tried the treatments and haven't benefited from them, haven't been retained in care-need another option." Dr. Scott MacDonald, lead physician at Providence Healthcare's Crosstown Clinic, told me. "Heroin-assisted treatment works. It gets people into care, and that's what's important to me, that's what's important for their health and what's important for our society." (3) "Dark, seedy, secret worlds" 1 began to explore the work of some of the most influential documentary photographers who have focused on heroin users in recent decades. What 1 learned is that most of them have consistently represented heroin users as exotic, primitive, dangerous to society, and essentially as outcasts. "There is a tendency in drug photography to attempt to make images of dark, seedy, secret worlds," writes drug policy expert John Fitzgerald. "This can have the effect of Othering the subject, or making them different through eroticizing or exoticizing them." (4) Many viewed Larry Clark's 1971 photo work Tulsa, about young people experimenting with drugs, sexuality and guns, as brutally honest and revealing. Clark's follow up photo-essay, Teenage Lust., published in 1983, also focuses on drug users in a voyeuristic, unsettling, and erotic way. "For Clark, the drug user is a modern primitive," writes Fitzgerald. "Like the young boys who play with guns and explore their sexuality, Clark's drug users plumb the depths of rapacious desire, so repressed and unexplored in the modern body. Clark's lifework is to bring this primitive desire to light in a liberal artistic venture." (5) Clark wasn't alone in his style of representing heroin users. Documentary photographer Eugene Richard's 1991 book Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue focused on cocaine culture in three inner-city neighborhoods. Its cover features an extreme close-up of a woman clenching a syringe between her teeth. Not only is the image unsettling, it has influenced the way many other photographers have depicted drug users to this day. …

As one of the great disasters of the twentieth century, Chernobyl and its representation through photography has received valuable topical, vet not necessarily mist aimed, scholarly attention. (1) Unlike other significant twentieth-century events like World War II, and specifically the Holocaust, which have visceral impact through the magnitude of monstrosities, arid which have developed into visual area studies themselves, Chernobyl, by comparison, is quieter. Few articles have addressed the role of art in mediating the disaster, as if the scope of tragedy belies poetic interpretation. Andrea Zink's essay "Approaching; the Void Chernobyl in Text and Image" considers the difficulty in representing the event beyond the immediate aftermath or the reactor failure. (2) The lack or creative response, she suggests, is due to the dearth or activity in the area beyond the first days and weeks of the catastrophe, and secondly, to the lack or a perceivable enemy, which reduces narrative conflict. Beyond this, "all that one can write about is simply a lack or events ... Even fictional stories cannot convincingly be set in the contaminated zone, for the Chernobyl region has itself turned into a piece of science fiction." (3) While Zink proposes a "lack of events." and hence a limit on the output of creative texts on Chernobyl, I argue that we need to include but go beyond the power plant itself (to what Zink refers to as the "all-encompassing cemetery or Chernobyl" (4)), and to consider broader effects or the meltdown in order to contest the "lack or events" or which Zink speaks. The catastrophe occurred on April 26. 1986, when a planned test triggered an explosion: however a number of contributing factors, including personnel with poor training, reactor design, and sociopolitical issues such as the Cold War added to the complexity. Approximately 43,000 people were evacuated from the town of Pripyat, and a thirty-kilometer radius of contamination forced further populations to evacuate and relocate. However, this zone is arguably arbitrary: a marked area does not guarantee that toxic air and polluted soil and waterways will cease leaking beyond the evacuated area. Radioactive fallout affected Ukraine, Russia, and other parts or Europe, with Belarus being extremely badly affected. There has been an increase in tumors, birth defects, and deformities, and a significant increase in thyroid cancer, yet official secrecy, debates, and denials mean it is difficult to get an objective picture of the extent or the health crisis. Adriana Petryna argues that "behind such seemingly definite numbers [of how many workers in the clean-up crew died or were affected by radiation] lies a web of scientific, moral, and political uncertainties. However, some medical research contributes to contesting this skepticism. Petryna draws on evidence that shows "significant increases in chromosomal abnormalities and other genetic markers of radiation effect in children living in contaminated areas." (6) Children born to parents involved in the cleanup and evacuees are considered at risk, as are those born in contaminated regions of Belarus. Although the aforementioned great disaster of the twentieth century, the Holocaust, has received regular attention by scholars, archivists, and filmmakers, those most regularly investigating, mourning, and capturing the aftereffects of Chernobyl are, arguably, documentary photographers. While Chernobyl may lack the spectacle that Zink points to, therefore suggesting a "lack of events," photographers have shown drama through the small moments of individual and community lives. 'Wink' Chernobyl has been read as post-apocalyptic--and therefore both extraordinary and an end point it is important to note the role the domestic played after the emergency. The minutiae of daily life--in spaces of work, home and leisure are being captured in recent Chernobyl documentary photography. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Looking to the developing body of Chernobyl photographs, there are competing themes--the architectural and the human. …

"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. ... Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies." There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. "Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. This literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism." Another silence ensued. "They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said. (1) On March 18, 2011, United States District Court Judge Deborah A. Batts found Richard Prince, Larry Gagosian, and the Gagosian Gallery guilty of copyright infringement against photographer Patrick Cariou. In 2000, Cariou published Yes Rasta, a book of documentary photographs that depict portraits and scenes from the Rastafarian society located in the hills of Jamaica, a community that lives remotely from our contemporary post-industrialized world. In 2005, Prince bought a copy of Cariou's book in St. Bart's and in 2008 presented an exhibition of new paintings titled "Canal Zone" at the Gagosian Gallery. Each painting directly quotes Cariou's photographs, with only minimal changes made to each image. (2) In her ruling, Judge Batts denied Prince and Gagosian's defense of fair use and wrote: "Prince's paintings arc transformative only to the extent that they comment on the photos; to the extent they merely recast, transform, or adapt the photos, Prince's paintings are instead infringing on derivative works." (3) Moreover, Judge Batts noted: Prince testified that he doesn't "really have a message" he attempts to communicate when making art. ... In creating the paintings, Prince did not intend to comment on any aspects of the original works or on the broader culture. ... Prince's own testimony shows that his intent was not transformative within the meaning of Section 107, though Prince intended his overall work to be creative and new. (4) Within ten days of the ruling, Prince and Gagosian were ordered to surrender all documents relating to the "Canal Zone" series and to notify collectors who had purchased the paintings that the work infringed on the copyright of Cariou's photographs and could not legally be exhibited. (5) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With respect to the genre of documentary photography, Prince and Gagosian "assert[ed] that Cariou's [p]hotos are mere compilations of facts concerning Rastafarians and the Jamaican landscape, arranged with minimum creativity in a manner typical of their genre, and that the photos are therefore" not protected under copyright law, suggesting that Cariou's photographs were part of the public domain, where common facts do not require specific attributions because they are common knowledge. (6) In so doing, Prince and Gagosian made a devastating claim against the documentary genre. The case not only brought the validity of appropriation art into question, but quickly became emblematic of the long-standing divide between photographers and painters. Since the 1980s, the success of contemporary art has largely hinged upon how well artists could appropriate images from other sources. Elizabeth Peyton, for example, made paintings based not only upon her own photographs, but also those found in mass-print magazines and newspapers. Eve Sussman's 89 Seconds at Alcazar (2004) debuted at the 2004 Whitney Biennial and reconstructed the moments before and after the famous scene captured in Diego Velazquez's painting Las Meninas (1656). Takashi Murakami rearticulated Japanese cartoons that were highly popular in America during the 1980s, while Jeff Koons and Urs Fischer fabricated representations of everyday objects on a monumental scale. Since appropriation is strongly connected to trends in the consumer market, its potential demise serves as a harbinger for contemporary art. …

THE THIRD ISLAND TRIENNALE, MILAN DECEMBER 1-20, 2015 OIGO n.1 The Third Island Edited by Antonio Ottomanelli Planar Books, 2015 240 pp (book) +42 (booklet)/38 [euro] In the post-photographic era, where image dissemination on the internet has made billions of images, from satellite photography to Instagram, readily available, is there any meaningful room left for documentary photography with a strong social bent? A new, ambitious project by OIGO (International Observatory on Major Works), a collective of photographers, argues in favor of the affirmative, with a book and traveling exhibition curated by Italian photographer Antonio Ottomanelli, titled The Third Island. Its first installment, The Third Island, brought together photographers and writers in 2014 to focus on the impoverished region of Calabria, and particularly its often failed infrastructure, which is frequently the first thing Italians think of when they hear the word "Calabria." The goal is to prod politicians, city planners, and citizens to take a critical look at the long-term effects of such building projects on the economy, environment, and landscape. The Third Island culminated in an eponymous book publication and a collateral photo exhibition at the Triennale International Exhibition in Milan (December 1-20, 2015) and amalgamated a kaleidoscope of voices and contributions. The next show (December 13, 2016-February 14, 2017) is expected to open in Rome at the National Graphics Institute in December 2016 with some new, additional shots by photographers Armando Perna and Maurizio Montagna. The focus of the investigation stemmed from Ottomanelli's participation in the Monditalia section of Rem Koolhaas's 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture, where participants were invited to reflect on Italy as a "case study" within the coordinates of architecture. Calabria, the toe to Italy's boot, has an ignoble reputation for its large number of unfinished construction projects that dot the horizon, its hotels and illegal villas that stand as concrete skeletons overlooking the Mediterranean and, most notably, its highways. Geographically, the region is dominated by rugged mountains. Promontories impede on the shoreline. Such majestic yet inhospitable terrain has helped make Calabria one of the least developed areas in the country, which in turn makes it vulnerable to the 'Ndrangheta, the local mafia that today stretches the width of the globe, generating billions of euros every year in illicit trade. The region remains largely unknown also to most Italians. "When we hear about Calabria, it's usually on the news, because of some legal orders or mafia-related facts," said Ottomanelli. "We're accustomed to a certain rhetoric in the way the region is portrayed, which has generated a very static perception at a collective level." (1) But with The Third Island, OIGO has taken it upon itself to research and document this problematic territory without sensationalizing it. The group consists of eleven individual photographers, one collective of two photographers, and a growing list of dozens of intellectuals and journalists. Their project presents us with a variegated and fragmented land, whose heterogeneous character is underlined by the plurality of personal languages and accents that each photographer and writer brings to the effort. The photographs of Andrea Botto, Allegra Martin, Montagna, Perna, and Filippo Romano (to name only a few) mix with archival material and with written texts. An analogic dictionary, compiled by such thinkers and practitioners as Teddy Cruz, Marco Ferrari, and Pelin Tan, is appended at the end of the volume, and proposes unconventional and unexpected definitions of what may constitute a "major" piece of infrastructure. "The aim was to promote a reflection on today's Italy by investigating its landscape," Ottomanelli told me, "and through this process, initiate a cross-disciplinary rumination on the theme of major infrastructure. …

OLIVER CHANARIN AND ADAM BROOMBERG: FIG. JOHN HANSARD GALLERY UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND FEBRUARY 6-MARCH 31, 2007 In the first half of the twentieth century, photography became an integral element of newspapers and magazines, with photojournalists effectively dispatching artist reporters to the rubbish bin of history. For some time, there have been fears that a similar fate awaits photojournalists. Their professional insecurity has multiple causes. Since the mid-twentieth century, television has been perceived as a threat, particularly with the arrival of 24-hour news stations in the 1990s. Politicians have also been blamed for restricting access, especially to war zones. Cultural theorists have been blamed for querying photography's evidential reputation from various angles. But lately, it has been amateurs--armed with camera phones at newsworthy events like Saddam Hussein's execution, and able to e-mail digital imagery to newspapers and television stations--who have provoked a new round of gloomy reflections on the future of professional photojournalism. [FIGURE 31 OMITTED] On the other hand, the first decade of the twenty-first century has also been marked by an unprecedented interest in documentary photography in fine art institutions. The most obvious example is the last "Documenta" in Kassel, Germany, in 2002, which concentrated on what the event's curator--New York City-based Okwui Enwezor termed "counter-hegemonic strategies" from the world's cultural margins, with photography a favored medium; or "Cruel and Tender: The Real in the Twentieth-Century Photograph," the first major photography show at the newly opened Tate Modern in London in 2003. This exhibition was more sedate than the eleventh "Documenta," yet the organizers shared Enwezor's assumption that photography continues to be a valuable medium for recording and commenting on the world. The above remarks are relevant to any assessment of the photographic team Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, South African Jews who now live and work in London. Both still under forty, they have quickly established an international reputation with a fresh approach to documentary photography that is evident in books like Ghetto (2003), about various forms of institutional confinement; Mr. Mkhize's Portrait (2004), about post-apartheid South Africa; and most recently Chicago (2006), a chilling portrayal of contemporary Israel apparently reconciled to a state of permanent emergency. All of these projects bear traces of Broomberg and Chanarin's formative experience as creative directors of the magazine Colors. Published by the Italian clothing company Benetton, Colors was launched in 1991 to celebrate cultural relativism and global diversity, mainly via the "universal language" of photography. The case against Benetton has been well rehearsed since the 1990s: that advertising campaigns and promotional magazines that blur traditional distinctions between news and commerce merely trivialize serious issues; or that the stress on human diversity is nothing more than a bland update of New York City's Museum of Modern Art's notorious mid-1950's exhibition "The Family of Man." But a case for Benetton can also be made, especially if one references the editions of Colors edited by Broomberg and Chanarin, for instance, their 2003 issue on slavery (Colors 53), produced in collaboration with Anti-Slavery International. For many, human bondage is assumed to be merely of historic interest, but Broomberg and Chanarin deftly edit words and images to reveal its scandalous, present-day manifestations in various locations around the world, including the United States. Critics complain about the aestheticization of misery. Broomberg and Chanarin counter that they are exploring ways of addressing and raising the awareness of young people whose enthusiasm for high street fashion by no means precludes a willingness to seriously engage with current affairs. …

A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII By Taryn Simon Museum of Modern Art New York City May 2-September 3, 2012 A century after August Sander began his lifelong series of environmental portraits, People of the 201h Century, the nature of documentary fine art photography has evolved into a multifaceted, contextualized genre no longer reliant on traditional photography's unique moment in time. Taryn Simon's project A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XIII, recently on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, exemplifies this contemporary approach. Simon's project consists of eighteen "chapters" (nine of which were on display at MoMA), each focusing on a group of people or animals that are usually connected genetically. Simon spent nearly four years, from 2008 to 2011, traveling throughout the world and photographing these "living genealogies and interconnected groups," including orphans in the Ukraine, invasive rabbits in Australia, a "representative" multigenerational family selected by the Chinese government, the descendants of a Nazi administrator, a Kenyan polygamist and practicing medical doctor and his offspring, as well as the families of a living man declared dead by land thieves in India, and the first female hijacker. Simon divides each group into three separately framed components: a grid of individual studio portraits shot against a neutral light brown background; a text panel consisting of brief descriptors for each of the portraits and a summary of the group; and lastly, a panel of ancillary photographs (mainly still lifes and landscapes), which Simon captured while on location making the portraits, and which provide context for the underlying genealogical portrait. In Simon's presentation at MoMA the portraits were small, only about 3 x 5 inches, thereby reducing the importance of any particular individual in favor of the larger whole and contributing to the significance of the accompanying text. The size of the photographs and their sheer quantity encourage the viewer to consider the more apparent connections across the large number of portraits: age, race, hair color, and even absence (Simon chose to leave a blank space for those who declined to or could not be photographed). Simon astutely frames her text to present it as its own panel, centered between the grid of portraits and her more limited selection of ancillary photographs, elevating its importance in the grouping and ensuring that her work is not just about looking. We are forced to read in order to understand the relationships across a group, the history of its interconnectedness, and the contemporary legacy Simon is presenting. In her seminal 1981 essay "In, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography)," feminist artist and writer Martha Rosier asked, "How useful are documentary photographs if there is no follow up, no way of knowing what happened next in the story?" (1) In A Living Man Declared Dead, Simon answers this question in two ways: first, in many of her genealogical portraits she is revisiting a public figure of some kind (most of her subjects have been previously portrayed in the news media), essentially "following up," in Rosler's words, through the lens of each figure's offspring. Second, she expands upon the individual portraits with the text component and also with the inclusion of more subjective images such as landscapes and still lifes. Often, these latter images include interior or exterior spaces related to the subject, or objects that reinforce the narrative contained in the text. For example, in her series of images about female hijacker Leila K haled, Simon includes a photograph of a fragment of the plane that she hijacked, an image of a painting of Khaled by a Palestinian artist, and an aerial photograph of the city of Hail, which Khaled allegedly Forced the pilot to circle during the hijacking. …

Angela Blakely and David Lloyd: Never Again--giving voice to survivors of the Rwanda Genocide Queensland Centre for Photography Brisbane, Queensland, Australia June 12-July 11, 2010 Witnessing the pain of others is an experience for which we are never fully prepared--but one we are always at the edge of encountering. An exhibition of Angela Blakely and David Lloyd's photographs at the Queensland Centre for Photography told the latest chapter in the tragic story of Rwanda. The photographers first visited Rwanda from 1994-95 and returned in 2006 and 2008. This exhibition shared stories from survivors of the Rwandan genocide, chronicling their pain. Visitors may have expected to encounter powerful documentary photography. Blakely and Lloyd's work, however, transcends the genre by immersing viewers in an ongoing narrative of daily survival. Upon entering the gallery, viewers were presented with seven ways of experiencing survivors' stories. The first consisted of four life-size images of women dressed in colorful traditional clothing--each accompanied by didactic panels relating the traumatic experiences that invisibly scarred each woman. After reading the panels, the viewer's gaze would often return to each woman's face, their perspective transformed. In the same gallery space, seven other images were presented with information panels, each attached in a diptych frame format. The images depicted buildings, leafy laneways, and rooms that appear as benign records. Yet all of these places have stories--dark secrets of massacre, betrayal, and horror--revealed on their text panels. These places, like the faces in the previous series, hide dark pasts of unspeakable acts of atrocity. Blakely and Lloyd present seductive images and then, in a turn of the narrator's page, reveal the horrifying truth. The gallery is not just a space for displaying photographs; it is also a place for telling stories. In employing the gallery installation as a device to enhance the story, Blakely and Lloyd depart from many of their documentary peers. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Another gallery space contained black-and-white photographs from the series "Rwanda Mission" (1994 95). To contemporary eyes, this earlier work exhibited a kind of reality that was once horrific and unexpected, but has become familiar. In an effort to avoid viewer familiarity, this exhibition highlighted other ways of storytelling that were fresh--not relying solely on photographs in frames alone. Next, the viewers encountered a long wall displaying a continuous line of black frames filled with black mount board on which small white letters spelled out names. Occasionally, a face loomed from the dark with a deep feeling of absence. The linear frames formed a family tree with the faces representing the living and the names representing those murdered in the genocide. …

SELF-REPRESENTATION IN THE ARABIAN GULF: PERSPECTIVES IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY AT QATAR GALLERY DOHA, QATAR OCTOBER 24-DECEMBER 1, 2007 Despite the media hype that exists on American television ranting about the turmoil and social unrest in the Middle East, a gentle yet thought-provoking exhibition entitled "Self-Representation in the Arabian Gulf: Perspectives in Photography and Video" recently resided at the Virginia Commonwealth University at Qatar's Gallery and reflected the contemplative and philosophically-driven nature of many of the artists represented in the show. Curated by Natalie Bailey and Sally Van Gorder, the exhibition presents works by twelve artists working with photography, video, and interactive media and who reside in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Driven by the theme of self-representation, this exhibition examines a range of work from the personal and intimate documentary photography of Loredana Mantello that portrays the Shi'ite community in Bahrain to Nuha Asad's sensuous yet socially acute photographs of heads covered by red textiles to Anas Al-Shaikh's photographs and interactive work that critically examine the Arab image. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the surreal-like work entitled World Without Strangers (2007), Al-Shaikh incorporates symbols and iconography into a photographic composite of Arab men against trees in a pristine western landscape resembling a campus environment. The figures, all of whom happen to be Arab artists, have their hands playfully raised--conjuring notions of villain or suspect. Al-Shaikh incorporates graphic symbols as metaphoric tools to reinforce the various thoughts and associations that accompany the stereotype of the Arab male. Placed beside some of the men are cell phones and other electronic devices, which sometimes are associated as "tools of terrorism" when accompanied by Arabs. According to Al-Shaikh, World Without Strangers represents the tensions sometimes facilitated by the messages created by western politicians and media in regard to the Arab community. Manal Al Dowayan's striking photographs present empowering images of Saudi women who are transcending traditional career paths. The images are meant to be iconic representations of Saudi women rather than actual people. Al Dowayan uses the burka or other props to conceal the women's identity. Her photograph, I am ... a Petroleum Engineer (2006) presents a portrait of a Saudi woman wearing a hardhat and uniform. However, her identity is concealed by a beautifully decorated traditional Saudi burka. Not only does she want to promote the idea of women who are exceeding the traditional gender-defined roles of women in Saudi, but to "show that traditions are also beautiful." (1) Camille Zakharia's documentary-style photographs represent both his personal and social concerns. In the black-and-white photograph Bouri 4--Bahrain (2006), opened rusting gates reveal a trashed car jacked up on its side by cinder blocks. The vehicle appears to have been abandoned on the side of a street in the seemingly sparse desert landscape. Other photographs capture areas of Bahrain with dilapidated buildings and peeling paint or old signage through a glass window. Zakharia writes in his artist statement, "When I turned 44 years old, I became more aware of my own mortality. I realized, suddenly, that I became the future I never thought I would be ... I saw myself in rusty metal and weathered walls, ragged clothes and everything that reflects the passage of time." (2) While Bahrain is rapidly modernizing, the aging walls of Bahrainian architecture are not only metaphors regarding his own aging but his personal reflection on the "erosion of the Arabic identity." (3) Mohammed Kazem's photographic installation "Autobiography 97-03 Flags" (1997-2003) is a series of photographs depicting Kazem with his back to the viewer beside construction markers peering out to the once undeveloped, sublime landscape of Dubai. …

The popularity of documentary photography has exploded in recent years and has become a site for rigorous discourse about the truth content of images. Taking a critical rather than celebratory stance, and using the documentary aesthetic as its structuring element, "Deadpan: Photography, History, Politics" brought together four photographers who utilize this aesthetic to varying, even conflicting, ends. Curators Geoffrey Batchen, Jechey Kim, and Jung Joon Lee chose photographs by Anne Ferran, Hein-kuhn Oh, Walid Raad, and Candace Scharsu to investigate the possibilities for photography to go beyond documentation and serve as interventions into the contemporary social landscape. If in most of visual culture "deadpan" appears as a non-style, asserting objectivity, neutrality, and the absence of the artist's hand, then these artists strive to undermine these associations. Ferran's large black-and-white photographs from the series "Lost to Worlds" (2001) depict two slightly different perspectives of the same grassy mound. They were hung one on top of the other, yet their composition suggested a more horizontal relation, as if the photographs were each taken with one eye closed. The mutability of the photographer's gaze mimies the mutability of the landscape: any evidence of the Australian women's prison that sat on this ground has disappeared, leaving nothing physical to attest to its existence. A caption interrupted this gap between image and history, suggesting that words can play their own presence against the absences within the frame. If Ferran captures the anxious aftermath when events become invisible, Oh points to when this anxiety leads to aesthetic production and historical reenactment. Kwangju Story (1995) shows moments from a 1995 restaging of Korea's Democratic Uprising that occurred on May 18, 1980, and many of Oh's photographs simulate images circulated after the actual event. But the students raising the Korean flag are actors, while photographs of onlookers and police display more authentically motivated gestures. Yet iterations of roles and symbols--flag, military, family, police--underscore the performative aspects of nationality and identity in all cases. Oh's work was visible from the street through windows that ran along one entire gallery wall, attracting countless stares from those walking by. The audience was then included in the performance, forced to confront the very metaphor for photography that was challenged by the images facing them. Scharsu's work presents an alternative to these notions of history as a process of loss and recovery. Five black-and-white photographs taken in 2000 depict casualties of the civil war in Sierra Leone: orphaned children, scarred victims, and amputees. …