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APERTURE
Sarah Pickering: Explosions, Fires and Public Order
Text by Karen Irvine.
UK photographer Sarah Pickering's Explosions, Fires and Public Order is a visually arresting glimpse into the secret world of civil defense. Combining four series, the book begins with Public Order, a project exploring the Metropolitan Police Public Order Training Centre, a simulated urban environment near London where officers rehearse responses to imagined scenarios of civic unrest. The Explosions series documents the tactical use of controlled explosions by the British military, designed to add realistic stress to training exercises and familiarize soldiers with various munitions. Fire Series and Incident, Pickering's most recent series, were produced while she was an artist in residence at the UK Fire Training College. While there, she photographed blazes that were set inside meticulously and elaborately constructed home interiors, as well as the stark, charred remnants of fake urban settings after the scenario fires had been put out. Pickering's projects reflect an aspect of the current zeitgeist: global terrorism matched with omnipresent anxiety. "My work explores the idea of imagined threat and response, and looks at fear and planning for the unexpected, merging fact and fiction, fantasy and reality."
FROM THE BOOK
"Sarah Pickering's photographs jar our sense of security and illuminate the ways in which we cope with traumatic events that are beyond our control. Her pictures depict environments and events crafted for the purpose of training policemen, firemen, and soldiers for calamities such as terrorism, civil unrest, fire, and war. By exposing the absurdity and controlled nature of these environments, Pickering's images reveal our predilection to deflect fear by trying to anticipate and plan for it--and our tendency to process it by turning it into narrative. Ultimately Pickering's photographs raise questions about the efficacy of preparedness and hint at the psychological effort needed to combat and recover from trauma--the struggle to live with the anxiety, the invisible violence, that accompanies security…Pickering's photographs are documentary, yet complicated by the fictitious, theatrical nature of the subjects she records."
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.25 x 11.25 in. / 124 pgs / 60 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $40.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $50 ISBN: 9781597111232 PUBLISHER: Aperture AVAILABLE: 3/31/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: No longer our product AVAILABILITY: Not Available
Sarah Pickering: Explosions, Fires and Public Order
Published by Aperture. Text by Karen Irvine.
UK photographer Sarah Pickering's Explosions, Fires and Public Order is a visually arresting glimpse into the secret world of civil defense. Combining four series, the book begins with Public Order, a project exploring the Metropolitan Police Public Order Training Centre, a simulated urban environment near London where officers rehearse responses to imagined scenarios of civic unrest. The Explosions series documents the tactical use of controlled explosions by the British military, designed to add realistic stress to training exercises and familiarize soldiers with various munitions. Fire Series and Incident, Pickering's most recent series, were produced while she was an artist in residence at the UK Fire Training College. While there, she photographed blazes that were set inside meticulously and elaborately constructed home interiors, as well as the stark, charred remnants of fake urban settings after the scenario fires had been put out. Pickering's projects reflect an aspect of the current zeitgeist: global terrorism matched with omnipresent anxiety. "My work explores the idea of imagined threat and response, and looks at fear and planning for the unexpected, merging fact and fiction, fantasy and reality."
