Yesterday I went to check out the new Richard Ross exhibit at Aperture Gallery.
I loved this show. I’ve never been to a more though-provoking, intense exhibit that really made me think about such a range of issues. I think I enjoyed it the most because it really made me think about the issues that I deal with at work every day in an entirely different way.
The exhibit is called “Architecture of Authority,” and they’re all pretty straightforward portraits of interiors and exteriors of buildings. And I can imagine that seeing them out of context, they would make for pretty mundane photographs. But taken as a collection, it’s incredibly powerful.
A few of my favorites were a set of four pictures. One was of a prison visiting room with the window separating the prisoner from the visitor, another was an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) visiting area with a similar setup, except with the phones on the wall so they could talk. 
The third was a confessional booth. The fourth was of the private phone booths in the Four Seasons in Mexico City. The striking thing about the juxtaposition was the similarties between the four photos. They all posed some means of verbal communication, but all in separate, walled off areas that isolate the speakers. The prison room vs. the ICE room just drove home how much this country treats immigrants like criminals. Even immigrants seeking refugee status, or those with small children—who should be handled with the utmost care and consideration— are routinely locked up for indefinite amounts of time, not given an immigration attorney to speaking to, and then sometimes just deported.
The juxtaposition of the confessional booth with the phone booth reminded me, possibly because I just the article in New York magazine about infidelity among married couples, of the sort of illicit, seedy aura those hotel phone booths have. Even in the age of disposable cell phones, the calls that must take place on those phones must rival the most sinful confessions.
Another favorite set depicted play area in a California preschool. A large white circle against green floor demarcates the central play area, and desks and other little-kid stuff surrounds the circle. The photo next to it shows a prison socializing area, demarcated by a round of seats lined with telephones and tables and chairs in the center. Ross’s photographs of a corridor of a high school, close to a corridor in a prison, are shocking. These four eerily echoed the school-to-prison-pipeline issue they focus on at work—a system that funnels troubled kids and teens from school straight to the adult prison system.
Another great pair depicted the interior of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, with its huge, multi-tiered circular chandeliers hung with glass candle lanterns and massive expanse of red carpet beneath a soaring domed ceiling. And the picture next to it shows the women’s prayer area in a mosque in Syria which is this tiny area partitioned off by what looks like shower curtains. The message is very clear: the sex-segregation between men and women in mosques leads to treatment of women as second-class citizens. But it made me wonder why Ross didn’t just show the women’s prayer area at the Blue Mosque. Perhaps it was equally grand and didn’t convey the message as clearly.
Other photos stood out just for their subject matter. One photo showed the lethal execution chamber in Louisiana, with the padded platform upon which the prisoner lies, and the padded armrest where the prisoner’s arm will swing out, away from his body, presented to the executioner to deliver the fatal drugs.
Another photos as of the open-air showers—wrapped with barbed wire—at Camp X-Ray in Guant&3225;namo. Guantánamo got a lot of attention from Ross. He photographed an interrogation room, a cell, the military tribunal building, and some of the outdoor holding areas. Abu Ghraib was also represented.
The overall issue of surveillance is present throughout. From a guard watch tower in a prison yard, to video cameras inside isolation rooms in prisons, and even the photos of the interiors of mosques, you get the creeping feeling that somoeone is always watching.
The title of the show also reflects back on the works. Whether the authority is a preschool teacher, to a prison guard at Abu Ghraib, to President Bush, to the United Nations, to God, it conveys both a respect for authority and an almost contempt for it at the same time. The show also confronts how the buildings and things in the pictures both help establish, but then sometimes undermines, that authority.
The exhibit will be up until June 21. Most definitely worth a Saturday afternoon.
