Karen Irvine

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

Back when I was a photography major in '80s Missouri, it was Aperture's clever magazine-books that nearly single-handedly kept me in the know as to the latest in the contemporary art world; and I'm happy to say that the organization is still going strong, and that I recently received from them their latest publication, a hardbound catalog of four recent exhibitions from British neo-realist Sarah Pickering, entitled Explosions, Fires, and Public Order. Designed to coincide with Pickering's first major museum show (at the Museum of Contemporary Photography here in Chicago), it showcases the author's efforts over the years to document a series of public-safety exercises held by various London emergency service units, such as for example highly formal landscape images of a fake neighborhood called Denton constructed by London police, to help train officers to deal with things like riots and acts of terrorism. These cold, precise portraits of such cartoonishly minimalist training grounds is enough to turn the whole thing into a Fascist Deco dream, like what you might imagine Albert Speer thinking about at night while in bed; and along the way, they collectively have a lot to say about our current police-state times, and of the rapidly more blase manner we now treat explosions and other large-scale disasters. I encourage all locals to check out the show at the MCP, running from April 9th through June 20th, or at least pick up the book if living outside of the Chicago area.

Out of 10: 9.1… (plus d'informations)