thursday night: Galerie Karsten Greve hosted an exceptional exhibition of "Photographs" by the long-time, British collaborators Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Photographs explores four conceptualizations (dubbed "conceptional ethnography") of media representation the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
the Red House, is a particularly fascinating series of photographs (100 x 76 cm each) taken inside a torture location (a "jail") nicknamed the Red House. in 1991, after the site had been abandoned, by Saddam Hussein and his cronies, the graffiti made by the previously deferred Kurd prisoners was discovered. the photographs themselves are simple, unpretentious documentations of the scrawlings carved into the stone and plaster walls. admittedly, i'm quite fond of them for their inherent naïve qualities, and for their aesthetic semblance to those lovely chalkboard scribblings of Cy Twombly (also represented by Galerie Greve). but, beyond that, beyond the aesthetic interest, they're loaded with so so much that escapes traditional photojournalism essays. what sort of boredom inspires such belabored work? and particularly from those men who'd ostensibly never previously explored their artistic visions? and what'd they endure between drawings? and to where did they disappear? all these questions remain unanswered, and we're left with the imaginings of obviously imperiled and desperate men, incarcerated in what must've been the very worst of the worst torture cells in Iraq...previous to those in more recent times perhaps.
the three other experimental photographic works featured left less of an impression on me. however i did have a brief conversation with Broomberg about the conceptional content of the exhibition--specifically the different lenses through which we watch war. and more precisely what's the difference between journalistic photographers (with their responsibility to accurately portray reality) and artists who use photography to present their own admittedly opinion-ed interpretation of events and peoples. i asked Broomberg if he imagined that he, in the Red House Series employed the same, or a similar, lens through which the Iraq war is presented to the Western World... and more specifically if he thought that he'd a wholly objective view of what he saw. he unabashedly replied that "well of course I have an opinion. so do you. I'm not a reporter..." and he went on to suggest that this is why it's important that artists are looking and representing war images--that we admit our bias, and yours as well. he also explained his fascination for the way in which the Western media lens is always that of watcher or colonizer, or at worst ethnographer. this he accepts is also his role, but he explained that the difference he sees is that the media will likely never admit that this is theirs, fundamentally.
more images of the exhibition are online here, as is further information about the artists.
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