Pete June 22, 2018

Sarah Pickering “Public Order”

Exercise

 

Look at some more images from Sarah Pickering’s series, Public Order on her website.

• How do Pickering’s images make you feel?

• Is Public Order an effective use of documentary or is it misleading?

 

 

Sarah Pickering’s series ‘Public Order’ contains a number of images of empty streets. However, something is wrong, not only are there no people, there is no rubbish everything is pristine. This gives are a strange sense of uneasiness.

Initially, I imagined that the images were taken with ND500 filter to give a very long exposure time to remove the people – have dome similar myself to shots of empty motorways. But one the litter was missing I thought has it all be cloned away in Photoshop but the images are fair too pristine for that level of cloning It is here that you get the Disneyland before opening feeling, something that is so real but so false at the same time. Later in the series, there is an image that that show behind the façade; showing that its just a façade – frontages that don’t have buildings behind them.

Without knowing the context of the set of images it hard to understand from the images what Pickering is trying to address is TV set or a Training area, is for promotional value? Once it clear that this is the training area for police and more specifically where they train for riots that it comes together.

Pickering has photographed the street forensically, but tellingly without a mock riot, in place (the police were disappointed she didn’t). It allow the viewer to ask questions such is society on such an edge that our law enforcement have to prepared to such an extent. Pickering say that the police where very help in letting her take the shots but when you consider her feeling at the time of the shoot, that was very much anti-establishment or more specifically anti-patriarchal society, this feel contradictory To me knowing that about the artist I wonder if mocking their preparation – Toy town for toy soldiers!

With the work of Paul Seawright I saw in the work the artist reflecting on the brutal and unnecessary nature of Sectarian Murder; with Pickering I believed she was mocking society and law enforcement, but with  further reading I can see she [revealing] our predilection to deflect fear by trying to anticipate and plan for it—and our tendency to create a story to help us process it. In on that note, I think it is effective as a documentary and it following all the rules that Seawright used when we set to produce art documentary. It is not Photojournalism.

References

Mocp.org. (2010). Sarah Pickering: Incident Control | Museum of Contemporary Photography. [online] Available at: http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2010/04/sarah_pickering.php [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Vimeo. (2010). Sarah Pickering on Public Order & Explosion series: Excerpt. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/11931505 [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Pickering, S. (2003). Sarah Pickering. [online] Sarahpickering.co.uk. Available at: http://www.sarahpickering.co.uk/Works/Pulic-Order/workpg-01.html [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].