In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

In the Now

In the Now features photo-based artwork made after the year 2000 by women artists born or working in Europe, serving as a unique time capsule of the past two decades. Selected from the collection of Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl—donated to LACMA and the Brooklyn Museum in 2021—the exhibition explores the ways in which traditional descriptive categories of gender, nation, and photography are being challenged by artists and the societies in which they live.

In the Now reveals variety of expression and complexity of form. Many artists in the exhibition contend with representations of the body but have individual perspectives on such issues as beauty, femininity, objectification, and what it means to be an artist who identifies as a woman in the twenty-first century. Likewise, these artists, while born or based in Europe, may or may not position their practices geographically or in accordance with nationalistic assumptions around identity. Some are grappling with the legacy of Soviet rule in their native countries, while others have immigrated to Europe from elsewhere in the world. Finally, these artists’ wide-ranging material and conceptual approaches testify to the expediting force of technology, which has made photography subject to greater circulation, alteration, and abstraction than ever before.

This exhibition suggests that women photographers practicing in Europe today are global citizens exploring chosen identities. In so doing, they point toward a future in which limiting statements can yield to productive questions.

Unless otherwise noted, all works are promised gifts of the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection. The collection comprises a total of 200 objects by eighty-one artists working in eighteen countries. The donation of this collection to LACMA and the Brooklyn Museum initiates a unique collaboration between the two museums. Over the next ten years, annual acquisitions will augment and diversify the collection, which will thus remain “in the now,” responsive to a changing world.

 

This exhibition was co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

 

Generous support is provided by The Annenberg Foundation.

 

All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Meredith and David Kaplan, with generous annual funding from Kevin J. Chen, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross, Mary and Daniel James, Jennifer and Mark McCormick, Kelsey Lee Offield, Lenore and Richard Wayne, and Marietta Wu and Thomas Yamamoto.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Because Every Hair Is Different, 2005

Because Every Hair Is Different, 2005

Marlene Haring
Austria, b. 1978, active England
Offset lithographs
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection
M.2021.96.19a–i
© Marlene Haring, digital image courtesy of Vargas Organisation, London

In Because Every Hair Is Different, Marlene Haring explores hair as a powerful physical marker of femininity and desirability. Beginning with the idea that long, fine, blond tresses are the quintessence of feminine beauty and pushing it to an absurd extreme, Haring transforms herself into a surrealistic creature. Her gesture, at once performance, installation, and photography, complicates the link between hair and beauty: potentially, hair is also burdensome and grotesque, demanding an endless investment of time and money.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Untitled (Bodybuilder I), 2003, and Untitled (Prime Minister), 2004

Untitled (Bodybuilder I), 2003, and Untitled (Prime Minister), 2004

Alexandra Croitoru
Romania, b. 1975
Dye coupler prints
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection
M.2021.96.32, .33
© Alexandra Croitoru, digital images courtesy of the artist

Alexandra Croitoru’s double portraits blend cynical humor and deadpan formality, mimicking standard compositions for such images. In each example, the man is seated and looks away from the camera, while the artist stands behind him, touching his shoulder and staring into the lens. Croitoru’s stereotypically masculine companions here are Adrian Năstase, prime minister of Romania at the time this work was made (who was later tried and imprisoned for corruption), and a bodybuilder who trained at her local gym. Although her gestures and posture appear deferential, Croitoru’s gaze is defiant.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Gender

While gender is often the first detail we learn about an artist who identifies as a woman, it is seldom the sole interpretive framework that should be applied to her practice. Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl’s collection, initiated in 2000, addressed a longstanding gender imbalance in the art world by focusing on women artists. The collection can also be situated within today’s larger cultural conversation about the meaning and importance of gender. In the Now suggests that the category “woman” need not be cisgendered: it can be considered on a spectrum of personal, subjective identification. Many of the artists featured here do not regard gender as the defining aspect of their work, instead positing that “artist” is a gender-neutral term; others directly address gender through their imagery, exploring the idealization of the female form, issues of beauty and the gaze, the role of women in society, the politicization of that role, and women as agents of change.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Observatory, 2015

Observatory, 2015

Milja Laurila
Finland, b. 1982
From the series In Their Own Voice, 2015–16
Ink-jet prints on acrylic
© Milja Laurila, photo courtesy of the artist

Milja Laurila’s inability to remember the time she spent living in Tanzania as a small child led her to explore the relationship between photography, memory, and identity—the way one can look at a photograph of oneself without recognition. In the series In Their Own Voice, Laurila asks what it means to be observed in different pictorial regimes. She transfers existing medical photographs of female subjects to transparent acrylic and groups them in horizontal arrangements. In this new context, free from the diagnostic gaze, the figures appear to come to life, regaining individuality and grace.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Boulevard, No. 1 (Baloustrade), 2007

Boulevard, No. 1 (Baloustrade), 2007

Caroline Heider
Germany, b. 1978
From the series Vogue Series, 2005–10
Dye coupler print
© Caroline Heider

In her Vogue Series, Caroline Heider proposes that a folded photograph—typically considered damaged—can be “recycled” into art and critique. Heider foregrounds the role photography plays in advertising and fashion by repurposing magazine images, inserting a fold in them, and rephotographing the now-interrupted narrative. Her interventions halt the endless cycle of desire such images create by ensuring that the viewer can no longer consume the initial message.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Gestures of Demarcation V, 2001

Gestures of Demarcation V, 2001

Melanie Manchot
Germany, b. 1966, active England
From the series Gestures of Demarcation, 2001
Dye coupler print
© Melanie Manchot, digital image courtesy of the artist

In her Gestures of Demarcation works, Melanie Manchot portrays herself outside, naked, and looking at the lens. Another person, fully clothed and facing away from the camera, pinches and tugs her skin. As viewers, we are uncomfortable witnesses to the scene, forced to question the issue of public versus private space and the integrity of the individual within communal systems. “My work employs performative strategies to chart gestures, moments of transformation or personal rituals through which my subjects collaborate,” Manchot has said. “Gender issues, the body as a site of subjectivity, and cultural constructions of identity have been recurring themes.”

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Self-Portrait as My Father, 2019

Self-Portrait as My Father, 2019

Silvia Rosi
Italy, b. 1992, active England
From the series Encounter, 2019
Ink-jet print
The Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection at LACMA and the Brooklyn Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Ralph M. Parsons Fund

In her series Encounter, Silvia Rosi reenacts images from a “lost” family album, posing as either her mother or father and including details that represent their migration from Togo to Italy. Here, Rosi poses in front of a colorful backdrop that evokes the vibrant practice of West African studio portraiture. She is dressed as her father, and each element in the scene symbolizes an aspect of his life: the suit and tie signify his status as a professional man; the set of books atop Rosi’s head indicate that he is educated (following Togo tradition); and the tomatoes that surround her represent the dramatic change in status her father experienced upon arriving in Italy, where he first worked in the fields of a farm.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Vogue Hommes, 2002

Vogue Hommes, 2002

Vanessa Beecroft
Italy, b. 1969, active United States
From the series Double Exposure, 2001–2
Ink-jet print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection
M.2021.96.5a–b
© Vanessa Beecroft, 2021, digital images courtesy of the artist

In 2002 the magazine Vogue Hommes invited Vanessa Beecroft to produce a series considering masculinity. This work depicts a naked model posed in a headstand, next to a clothed man—Beecroft’s brother—who stands upright. By staging the figures in front of Milan’s Palazzo di Giustizia (Palace of Justice), Beecroft references her brother’s profession in the field of law. He wears the clothing of contemporary status and power, while the woman hovers out of time and place, an idealized fantasy of subordinate beauty.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

No. 44 and No. 26, 2016

No. 44 and No. 26, 2016

Bettina von Zwehl
Germany, b. 1971
From the series The Sessions, 2016
Ink-jet prints
© Bettina von Zwehl

Bettina von Zwehl situates the photographic portrait within the long history of portraiture by referencing bygone stylistic approaches such as the painted miniature and the cut-paper silhouette. The Sessions comprises fifty silhouette portraits of the same young girl, with their edges torn to create irregular borders. The series presents multiple facets of one individual, with the variation of torn edges counterbalancing the inherent replicability of the silhouette format. Produced during the artist’s residency at the Sigmund Freud Museum in London, The Sessions reflects von Zwehl’s interest in psychoanalysis and the creative process.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Untitled, September 2006, 2006

Untitled, September 2006, 2006

Hannah Starkey
Northern Ireland, b. 1971, active England
Dye coupler print, printed 2021
© Hannah Starkey, digital image courtesy of the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles and Maureen Paley, London

Hannah Starkey makes large-scale photographs of women in public spaces by hiring actors or models to pose for her, then adding props and scouting architectural settings with symbolic resonances. By photographing women in ambiguous narratives—as in this cinematic scene, in which a pregnant woman stands waist-deep in water in front a large expanse of windows—Starkey questions the documentary nature of photography and its representation of gender. She often leaves her photographs untitled but includes the month and year in which the image was completed. While the choice to provide a date gives additional context, the meaning of the image remains open to interpretation.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Photography

In the twenty-first century, photography has almost fully transformed from a light-sensitive, chemically based medium to one that uses digital technologies for image capture, storage, and dissemination. As the volume and mutability of images increase, the responsibility of understanding photography and its histories has become increasingly urgent. Working in the wake of these changes and in the tradition of twentieth-century avant-gardes, artists represented in the Haukohl Collection have explored the nature of photography in various ways. Some have journeyed back to early photographic methods, using chemical processes to make cameraless photographs directly on paper. Others question the idea of medium specificity, blending photography with painting, sculpture, film, and performance. Many of the artists are concerned with the construction, materiality, and circulation of photographic images, particularly in relation to consumer culture. Future growth of the collection within this area might include works by artists who abandon paper as a material support for the image, moving fully into the digital realm.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Farsh132006, 2006

Farsh132006, 2006

Shirana Shahbazi
Iran, b.1974, active Switzerland
Hand-knotted carpet
© Shirana Shahbazi

Shirana Shahbazi makes photographs in traditionally European styles and genres—including still life, landscape, and, in this case, portraiture—questioning hierarchies and sometimes translating her images into different mediums. In Farsh132006, a photograph of a young woman’s head, reminiscent of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665), has been made into a hand-knotted carpet by artisans in Shahbazi’s native Iran. These multiple incarnations encourage us to consider the various ways signs can be rearranged and recycled today.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Red Swimmer, 2006

Boo Ritson
England, b. 1969
Dye coupler print

To make Red Swimmer and other works in this series, Boo Ritson applied brightly colored house paint directly on the faces and bodies of her sitters, transforming them into characters loosely based on American stereotypes. She then asked photographer Andy Crawford to capture these painting-sculpture-performance hybrids before the paint dried. As Ritson explains, “I'm not a photographer; I'm an artist who uses photography. In its raw state, my work can only be seen by me and the people I work with, so photography is essential. I can't show my work without it.”

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Here Do You Want To, 2014, and Gift For Me, Simon Lee Gallery Christmas 2013 (1), 2015

Josephine Pryde
England, b. 1967, active England and Germany
From the series Hands (Für Mich) (For Me), 2014–20
Ink-jet prints

In this series, Josephine Pryde shows young women’s hands in close encounters with their bodies, screens, or other objects that serve to define them. Her cropped compositions create pitched tableaux that skew ironic and inscrutable, while her use of the vertical phone-camera format mirrors contemporary methods of photography and display. Frozen in time, the women’s unselfconscious gestures seem stylized, pointing toward the selfhood we seldom acknowledge while continually gazing into the world of our smartphones.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Untitled (00.2), 2000

Untitled (00.2), 2000

Uta Barth
Germany, b. 1958, active United States
From the series Untitled, 2000–2002
Dye coupler prints
© Uta Barth

Uta Barth created this series while traveling in unfamiliar cities, hurrying along, often finding herself lost. She became interested in the things she noticed out of the corner of her eye, which caused her to “double take.” These two works depict the Tate Modern in London while the museum was under construction in 2000. As viewers shift their eyes from one point of scrutiny to the next, the image they have just been looking at—bits of reflected light—moves into the periphery.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Day 1, Wednesday, 2014

Day 1, Wednesday, 2014

Sigrid Viir
Estonia, b. 1979
Ink-jet prints
© Sigrid Viir

Sigrid Viir produced this diptych for a solo exhibition in which she performed the act of creating a body of work. Twelve pairs of photographs represented the duration of the exhibition, with accent colors (pink, in the case of Day 1) corresponding to paint she applied to a sculptural object and pedestal in the gallery each day. Folding and manipulating her own self-portrait, Viir comments on the artist’s compulsion to replicate a style or self in relation to art world demands. At the same time, her challenge to the physical integrity of the photographs asks us to recognize them as tangible objects rather than immaterial images, in dialogue with each other and with architectural space.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

 Exposure #1 2000, 2002

Exposure #1 2000, 2002

Barbara Probst
Germany, b. 1964, active United States and Germany
Dye coupler prints
© Barbara Probst/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

In this two-part piece, Barbara Probst embraces multiple perspectives of a single moment. Each image is integrated into the narrative of the other while simultaneously unraveling it. In one photograph, the protagonist appears to be running from the camera, perhaps playfully; the aerial image of her on a rooftop, however, suggests more ominous surveillance. Probst reveals her process by regularly including her camera and tripod in her work, their presence either confirming the truth of the image or breaking it down. Triggering back-and-forth readings, Probst heightens our awareness of both the physical and psychological act of looking.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Le déguisement, 2013

Le déguisement (The Disguise), 2013

Carolle Bénitah
Morocco, b. 1965, active France
From the series Photo-Souvenirs, 2001–present
Ink-jet print and embroidery floss
© Carolle Bénitah

While pursuing an artistic career in Paris, Carolle Bénitah rediscovered family albums from her Moroccan childhood and began to reinterpret the images they contained. She selected, scanned, and made new prints of the original photographs, then embroidered patterns into them with bright red thread. The source photograph for Le déguisement was taken on the Jewish holiday Purim, when costumes are often worn. Bénitah echoed this tradition by stitching veils over each child’s face and allowing loose ends to pool at the bottom of the frame.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Wasteland, 2015

Wasteland, 2015

Ulla Jokisalo
Finland, b. 1955
From the series Collection of Headless Women, 2013–18
Ink-jet print and pins
© Ulla Jokisalo, digital image courtesy of the artist

Ulla Jokisalo uses found photographs—from popular magazines, vintage family albums, and other sources—as the points of departure for her carefully handcrafted assemblages. She then sews, manipulates, and otherwise fashions dimensional compositions that unite her personal memories and associations with a surreal world of fairy tale figures and gender-redefined creatures. The title of this work is a reference to T. S. Eliot’s iconic poem “The Waste Land” (1922), in which a large cast of narrators continually upends our sense of reality.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Papiers Pliés, 2007

Papiers Pliés, 2007

Yto Barrada
France, b. 1971, active Morocco and United States
Ink-jet prints
© Yto Barrada

Yto Barrada made Papiers Pliés by collecting the recycled paper wrappings used by vendors of snack foods—chickpeas, peanuts, sunflower seeds—in Perdicaris Park in Tangier, Morocco, then folding the detritus into geometric forms and photographing it. The printed French words taille (size) and expédition (shipment) indicate the sheets’ original function as forms from a textile factory and allude to Morocco’s past as a French colony (1912–56). Focusing on documents transformed first into food containers, then into trash, and finally into art, Barrada brings attention to dynamics between Western nations and the global South.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

A Poem by Repetition by Aram Saroyan (CD), 2016

A Poem by Repetition by Aram Saroyan (CD), 2016

Natalie Czech
Germany, b. 1976
Ink-jet prints
© Natalie Czech/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

The work is part of Natalie Czech’s Poems by Repetition series, in which the artist recreates poems by well-known twentieth-century authors by highlighting or hiding prose on printed ephemera and consumer goods—from iPads and magazine articles to album covers and overdrive pedals. Here, three photographs of the top portion of the thirtieth-anniversary album cover for Pink Floyd’s hit 1973 song “Money” create Aram Saroyan’s minimalist poem “ney/mo/money.” Foregrounding both the inherent reproducibility of the photographic medium and employing techniques of repetition similar to those used by poets, the series blurs the boundaries between writing and photography.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Nation

The European Union, founded in 1993, promised its citizens “four freedoms”: the free movement of goods, services, people, and money. Most of the artists in this exhibition came of age in the so-called new Europe, which despite its stated aspirations is still shadowed by the nationalism that has plagued European countries and their colonial territories since the nineteenth century. Whether considering their countries of origin or their adopted homes, these artists grapple with the symbols, legacies, and traumas of nationalism past and present in their work. When Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl initiated this collection in 2000, his parameters excluded Russia but included former Soviet republics and the United Kingdom. Future acquisitions can reflect shifting concepts of Europe as a pluralistic geopolitical and cultural entity.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Parallel Images, 2015

Parallel Images, 2015

Eva Koťátková
Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), b. 1982
Gelatin silver prints

Having grown up in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia, Eva Kot’átková creates collages, performances, and site-specific installations that explore the individual’s relationship to social structures and institutions such as hospitals and schools. These three vignettes depict confrontations between silhouetted figures, some of whom wield devices inspired by the artist’s research in the archives of local institutions, like the Psychiatric Hospital Bohnice outside of her native Prague. Kot’átková also draws on the aesthetics of twentieth-century Czech surrealism (such as Emila Medková’s Shadowplay photographs from the late 1940s), absurdist literature, and books on psychology, medicine, and social science.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

LSNr. 1408 420 and LSNr. 1408 421, 2014

LSNr. 1408 420 and LSNr. 1408 421, 2014

Iris Hutegger
Austria, b. 1964, active Switzerland
Gelatin silver prints and thread
© Iris Hutegger, photo courtesy of the artist

Iris Hutegger has described her stitched photographs as “real images of fiction.” While hiking in the mountainous region of Switzerland where she lives, Hutegger takes color photographs that she prints in black and white. She then assigns the images numbers, removing their geographical specificity, and uses her sewing machine to insert foliage that could never appear in reality. The emotional dimension of the stitching is twofold: it adds imagined color and life and shifts our sense of scale from a vast mountainous expanse to a minutely patterned surface.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Saba—Eritrea to London on foot, by car, lorry, boat and aeroplane, 2013, printed 2021

Aida Silvestri
Eritrea, b. 1978, active England
Ink-jet print with thread
The Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Collection at LACMA and Brooklyn Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Ralph M. Parsons Fund

Aida Silvestri’s poetic approach to documentary photography allows her to explore diaspora, culture, mental health, and politics in her work. In this series, she embroiders portraits of Eritrean refugees with colored thread that maps the perilous journeys they took toward safety and personal freedom. The black-and-white images recall passport photographs, yet Silvestri uses blurred focus to maintain her subjects’ anonymity and enlarges the prints to elevate the refugees’ newfound exile identities.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Metamemory, 2007

Metamemory, 2007

Melanie Bonajo
The Netherlands, b. 1978
Kinga Kiełczyńska
Poland, b. 1972
From the series Modern Life of the Soul, 2007
Dye coupler print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection
M.2021.96.6
© Melanie Bonajo and Kinga Kielczynska, digital image courtesy of the artists and AKINCI, Amsterdam

Staged deep in a forest in eastern Poland, this photograph depicts a member of a fictional utopian cult in the process of “devolving” into a tree—rejecting Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in favor of plant life. In the series Modern Life of the Soul, Melanie Bonajo and Kinga Kiełczyńska capture nature’s beauty and mystery at the same time as they satirize our tendency to romanticize it, particularly in relation to gender and nationalism.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Untitled (Benvenuto di Giovanni), 2005

Untitled (Benvenuto di Giovanni), 2005

Elisa Sighicelli
Italy, b. 1968
Dye coupler print and lightbox
© Elisa Sighicelli, photo courtesy of the artist

While living in London, Elisa Sighicelli made a number of lightbox works inspired by the Renaissance art on display at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. Looking past the paintings’ dense content, Sighicelli examined the background scenery and extracted passages of charming natural detail and painterly freedom; here we see a horizontal slice of the lower portion of Benvenuto di Giovanni’s Ascension. She then mounted the photographic print on translucent acrylic, the reverse side of which she selectively painted black, so the fluorescent light illuminates only the sky. The variable light emanating from behind the image gives it dimensionality and flow, creating a dreamlike scene.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Land Mine, 2005

Land Mine, 2005

Sarah Pickering
England, b. 1972
From the series Explosion, 2004–9
Dye coupler print
© Sarah Pickering, digital image courtesy of the artist

“My work explores the idea of imagined threat and response, and looks at fear and planning for the unexpected, merging fact and fiction, fantasy and reality,” says Sarah Pickering. In her series Explosion, Pickering shows the English countryside violently disrupted by mines, artillery, and other weapons. On closer inspection, we see that these are small-scale simulated explosions, of the type used in military and police training exercises and special effects. Possessing the pyrotechnic allure of a magic trick, Land Mine is also a warning: in an image-centric culture, we can too easily admire simulations while forgetting the destructive capacities of arsenals maintained by governments and other entities around the world.

In the Now: Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection

Sea Eagle, 2006

Sea Eagle, 2006

Jane Wilson and Louise Wilson
England, b. 1967
From the series Sealander, 2006
Ink-jet print
© Jane and Louise Wilson, digital image courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York

Twin sisters Jane and Louise Wilson have spent three decades photographing sites that shaped twentieth-century European history. Sea Eagle is part of a series of large-scale photographs depicting Nazi bunkers built along the coastline from Spain to Norway during World War II. The Brutalist structures survive, though they are now crumbling into the sea. Looming over the viewer and thus assuming some of the bunker’s original hateful power, this black-and-white photographic document asks whether the ideology the building represents should be fetishized, conserved, or destroyed.