When confronted with any set of images or photographs in series, it is instinctual to try and form an understanding of what is being communicated. In the absence of being explicitly told, we sub-consciously begin to form relationships between the images that help constitute for us, a narrative or story we can hang onto. We only need a small amount of time to do this. Think of how photographs are presented in gallery settings, where the space between respective images creates a space of thought, a space for processing. Similarly, the blank pages of a book might function in a similar way. It is this blank space which offers the required temporality. Of course, text and labels provide signposting or description, they significantly predetermine our understanding. But what happens when there is sparse information available? Indeed, the skill of the artist, editor or curator really comes into play when apparent ambiguity and dislocation lead to a relay of thoughts, the formation of ideas where the imagination is free to play and sweep the viewer into a conscious dream.
Waco by Jack Garland had this effect on me, especially around narrative or lack thereof. I first encountered the book at the Nearest Truth Editions stand in a busy Polycopies in Paris last Winter. I was instantly drawn to its deep green cover and compelling embossed portrait. This was followed by a minor double-take noting its title, Waco. In recent history, Waco is, for anyone who remembers, the site of a tragedy in American history, actually, a fuck up of huge proportions. A siege had ensued when the US federal government (ATF) and the Texas Rangers police force, on being tipped off about an amassing of arms, had intended to raid a compound belonging to a religious cult known as the Branch Davidians led by their leader, David Koresh. The siege had resulted in a what has now become known as the Waco massacre. It resulted in a huge loss of life, including children, and became itself a cultish story of American societal disaffection. It is definitely worth reading about it, look it up. In any case, as I flicked through the pages of this book, I found no direct reference to this event nor even the slightest evidence that this was a book about the Waco siege. Indeed, it isn’t.
However, as mentioned above, the inclination to form a narrative however feint, led me to construct something around the lines of an alternative story of place, detached from its popular history and unfortunate fame. Perhaps, in stretching this idea, something traumatic, of this American disaffection was to be reflected in these enigmatic monochrome photographs, uncaptioned as they were, expressing a dark underside of life in the suburbs and in the country just outside city limits. The American West has featured significantly in popular visual culture and media. Not least as the Western frontier in the ‘wild west’ movies depicting the fragile and dangerous existence of the pioneers forging their way onto land rich for farming, cattle and other natural resources such as gold and oil. Don’t forget the trope of the one dimensional threat of native ‘Indians’, Mexicans and other perils proving to be barriers to modern progress. Photography of the West is perhaps best exemplified by the New Topographics of the 1970’s; a famously exhibited collection of photographers who set late modern development against the backdrop of the vast, sublime Western landscape. Or it is recent cinema and in particular, film director David Lynch who takes existing visual and narrative tropes of the West and twists them into the psychological cinematic expression of modern hopes and dreams, darkness and nightmares.
In Garland’s Waco, perhaps something of all these tropes inflects the photographer’s style and visual compositions. The cinematic clearly plays a strong part in much of what is presented imparting the atmosphere and language of film noir and art house cinema. There is the odd visual reference to the New Topographics, but this range of images is a closer look at place in the West. There is a dynamism is some images that imply movement through the lens, candidly captured moments that seem to pay regard to the photographic instant which, for Garland, must have felt intuitive just at that time. These images in particular remind me in a fragmentary way of the psychic space explored in the aforementioned Lynchian world. A reflection of daily life but slightly skewed. Teetering on the edge of something. As a set of pictures that resist any strong narrative, there is just enough of a sense of stability to hold it together as a series, and that’s what I think I like the most about this book. There is no need to draw too many connections between images, I find pleasure in the sense of disconnectedness and ambiguity it provides.
Over our online meeting, Garland tells me how much music informs his imagination and artistic impulse. This makes sense as the book is co-edited by our very own Brad Feuerhelm, another artist/producer who is heavily influenced by music and so I can imagine a meeting of minds. Incidentally, in an effort to be completely transparent here, I see that in reviewing a Nearest Truth Editions title on American Suburb X might appear like in-house PR. However, as with all my ASX writing, what I choose to review is my own choice and is purely on the merits of the publication and my personal relationship with a work. What is fascinating with this publication is how well the visual ideas and editorial flow merge in this union. The book feels very complete and balanced as an outcome, a testament to this collaboration.
Waco is largely a description-less, visual and aesthetic encounter. Seemingly, an emphasis on poetics over politics. However, our engagement with poetics is rarely unblemished and pure, without contextual intrusions invading our interpretations. As I write this, some major disruptions are happening in US politics after the recent change in government, causing some considerable upset across society. It seems the next four years could be a rough ride for many in the US (and elsewhere). While this forms the current affairs backdrop, I imagine Garland’s Waco as a reflection on social discontent, an allegory of what may come, foreboding, quietly in anticipation.