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by Richard Ross

For the past several years- and with seemingly limitless access-Richard Ross has been making unsettling and thought-provoking pictures of architectural spaces that exert power over the individuals within them.

From a Montessori preschool to churches, mosques, and diverse civic spaces-a Swedish courtroom, the Iraqi National Assembly hall, the United Nations-the images in Architecture of Authority build to ever harsher manifestations of authority: an interrogation room at Guantanamo, segregation cells at Abu Ghraib, and finally, a capital punishment death chamber.

Though visually cool, this work deals with hot-button issues: the surveillance that increasingly intrudes on post 9/11 life, the abuse of power, the erosion of individual liberty. The connections among the various architectures are striking; as Ross points out: “The Santa Barbara Mission confessional and the LAPD robbery homicide interrogation rooms are the same intimate proportions. Both are made to solicit a confession in exchange for some form of redemption”.
Publisher: Aperture

Code:18608

Member price: $11.69