Attention to a Larger Context
Richard Ross: Attention to a Larger Context from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.
In this video, Richard Ross talks about how images from his project Architecture of Authority attempt to change perceptions of our social surroundings. Using as examples communication rooms in both religious and incarceration spaces, he points out how both evoke feelings of intimacy in order to extract confessions. Ross’s images highlight the manipulative aspect of architecture as it is made to answer various, and often unsaid, goals in every type of space.
The exhibition Architecture of Authority was recently on view at Aperture Gallery and will be opening at The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas on Friday, September 19, 2008. With this body of work American photographer Richard Ross presents unsettling pictures of architectural spaces that each exert a kind of power over the individual. From a Montessori preschool, to churches and mosques, to an interrogation room at Guantánamo and segregation cells at Abu Ghraib, Ross’s photographs reflect the state of our post 9/11 world—one in which he believes the public has become accustomed to the abuse of power, erosion of individual liberty, illegitimate authority, and constant surveillance.
