Richard Ross' photography, and especially his collection Architecture of Authority, stood out to me more than any of the other photo essays that were presented to us, both in subject matter and in form. With the orderly, symmetrical arrangement and subtle, yet, domineering and dramatic perspective of the objects in the picture, it felt like I was looking at a still from the police state love-child of Pink Floyd's The Wall and a Stanley Kubrick film (which, as an afterthought, would be a pretty bad ass combination for a movie).
By making good use of the architectural elements present in his environment, Ross projects an aesthetically pleasing, yet very disturbing perspective onto everyday objects that would otherwise remain dry and static. But still, the most interesting thing about these photographs is that in his critique of institutionalized power and abuse of authority they manage to remain absent and void of any presence of these same corrupt authority figures, or of any human life form. It's almost as if the corruption existed within the present space itself, as if it was there when it was built, as if the purpose behind this architectural design was masterminded with the principles of domination and submission, the master/slave relationship, in mind.
The elements of action in this photograph (which happen to be furniture and other various household scenery) only create meaning from how their forms interact with each other within their predefined spaces, and therefore, paradoxically transform the viewer into a passive subject predestined by his environment. They show humanity as a majority living under the suspicious thumb of a precious, paranoid few who wish to remain this way through the guise of propaganda that tells its subjects "Be A Happy Worker!" And the only reason these elements are effective is because they lack a human presence. With bodies filling the seats of the auditoriums and prison cells, we lack a proper structural perspective on how these institutions are inherently set up to control and indoctrinate the individual. The creepy, cathartic feeling that the viewer is left with comes from the sudden realization that these are scenes and activities that we participate in every day.
What Ross is getting at is not so much that corruption of power exists within the individual, but in the established system he has created for himself that is almost doomed to breed corruption. His photos depict an almost Orwellian society of citizens who are predetermined, by simple fact of behavioral conditioning through environmental stimuli, to be unwillingly manipulated into obedience. And within these manipulative scenes, Ross simultaneously manages to also bring broad overtones of aesthetic pleasure which inspire fantastical dreams of grandeur and beautiful architectural landscapes within a man-made world, that seeks to subvert any sort of fantasy or beauty that might remain. And therein lies the trickery. It's almost as if these scenes were artificially in place before humanity, like a child's empty play set, constructed by the powers that be, which already has the Barbie dream house and the Malibu roadster, and just needs some bodies to fill the seats and carry out instructions. The only exception is that the dream house is a heavily surveillanced prison cell and the Malibu roadster is your inevitable casket hurling down the interstate at 85 mph (not that we would know the difference between dream houses and prison cells, anyway). Man is a victim in the environment of his own invention.
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