 Kill House, 2005 c-type photograph, 40 x 60 in / 122 x 152.4 cm Christopher Stewart Observations "Kill House" is a series of photographs depicting the interior of a harsh, unhomely, and uninhabitable house. Located in Arkansas in the United States, the structure is used for the training of private military personnel deployed in the "war on terror". As an extension of his "Insecurity" series, Christopher Stewart's images are a somber meditation on the pervasive climate of fear and preoccupation with security within contemporary society. Working on the hinterland of the security industry, Stewart's photographs offer an insight into worlds usually shrouded in secrecy. Although ostensibly constructed to train people to establish safety, violence infuses this building, and demonstrates an ever-growing fear of being insecure. Addressing a universal paranoid state where the global dispersal of people, ideas and power creates the potential for both freedom and apprehension, the images are a subtle commentary on how we have become imprisoned within a cycle that requires security to combat perceived, but unknown, threats. Stewart is acutely aware of the politics of documentary photography, and the often problematic relationship photography has had with issues of truth. Perhaps more interestingly, he uses photography as an observational tool to analyse the faltering state of reality itself, increasingly inflected as it is with a fantasy of violence and nihilism more familiar to the cinematic construct. Used as a tool of surveillance and control, Stewart's medium too could be thought of as a method for instilling fear. The film work "Levanter", which accompanies the Kill House photographs, records a military communications base on the summit of the rock of Gibraltar as it is slowly shrouded. Taking its name from a weather phenomenon, the Levanter cloud occurs just a few times a year, obscuring the rock with a fine mist. Stewart's film might be understood as a meditation on how we are denied access to information and knowledge without even noticing; like fog, visibility is removed incrementally. However, the stillness of Levanter and lack of direct narrative in "Kill House" encourages viewers to fill in the gaps themselves. Photographs depicting empty rooms, darkened stairwells, a rusty bed that is devoid of any comforting attributes, implicitly encourages us to position ourselves within these foreboding spaces, and reflect upon our own fears. In an environment in which the deaths of people in Iraq are reported daily, it is feasible to ask how Stewart can compete with the saturation of traumatic imagery of photographs that themselves use a vocabulary of fear. In "On Photography", (1977) Susan Sontag discussed the problem of normalising horror through the reproduction of the photographic image. She suggested that like an addict, the need for images that become more and more graphic feeds us a portrayal of horror to the point where we become anaesthetised to it, but are dependent upon it for confirmation of existence and reality. The saturation of visual vocabulary with horror or images relating to horror, makes the "horrible seem more ordinary". However, by paring down his images to architectural details, depopulated spaces, shrouds of cloud and mist, Stewart slows down the constant relay of shocking images. In a world where war is broadcast live on television, by leaving space for meditation, Stewart is able to negotiate a subject matter that is both familiar and alien at the same time. Exhibition: 9 May - 10 June 2006 Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 10 am - 5.30 pm, Sat 11 am - 4 pm Gimpel Fils 30 Davies Street GB-London, W1K 4NB Telephone +44 20 7493 2488 Fax +44 20 7629 5732 Email info@gimpelfils.com www.gimpelfils.com |
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