SHOW AT THE LAB GALLERY, 47th&LEX., NYC - OPENING : 7 JANUARY 2005
PHOTO FROM INVITATION TO
SHOW
AND OPENING AT LIVING/LEARNING GALLERY, UNVERSITY OF VERMONT, OCTOBER
4TH, 2004
the
HOMELAND SECURITY Collection
SOME BACKGROUND
TO "THE HOMELAND SECURITY COLLECTION"
Activist
artist/photographer/filmmaker/animator John Douglas (see article on
Da Speech)
is at it again! Isolationism, vulnerability, cold steel, human flesh,
and latent violence seethe in “Homeland Security” -- no,
it isn’t a film or video, it’s the latest provocative series
of photographs from the veteran Charlotte multi-media creator. Sporting
an M16 and nothing else, Douglas appears in this series of images as
a literal “one-man army” -- duplicated photographically
and armed to the teeth in a procession of tableaus that confront the
power and impotence of firepower. Sans any associative figures but male
replicas of himself, supplanting the male organ in almost every pose
with M16s (or flags), “Home Security” offers a sardonic
dissection of America’s current pre-emptive ‘go it alone’
military foreign policies and a delirious portrait of primal ‘citizen
soldiers’ in native habitats (trailors, tracks, flag-draped coffins,
and -- most chilling of all -- seated stoically around a TV set in the
darkness, lit only by its cyclopean light). It’s brilliant, funny,
unnerving, confrontational, disturbing stuff; you haven’t lived
‘til you’ve seen a small platoon of nude, armed, and dangerous
Douglas clones poised for action. Seven
Days offered a generous spread on “Homeland Security”
in its June 30-July issue (pp. 24A-26A) - Steve R. Bissette, GREEN MT. CINEMA - Vol.1 |
THE FOLLOWING IMAGES [PAGES
1-6] ARE IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
SERIOUS SECURITY
[undercover]
ALL IMAGES © COPYRIGHT 2005
