Annie Hogan

Bombs Away Dream Baby (Red, White and Blue) speaks to the influence and presence of the US government on the world stage today and whether this power is diminishing or strengthening with regard to the cost of fighting several wars and the rise of China and India as competitors for import/exports and economic growth. The Bombs Away Dream Baby (Red, White and Blue) images were made with a 10 x 8 pinhole camera, black and white film contact printed onto watercolor paper and made into cyanotypes. The cyanotypes are then scanned and enlarged. The Red image has added color, and the White image has color removed (white). The Blue image is that of the original cyanotype. They are then printed as large digital archival inkjet prints. Images 3 x 60” x 40”

The Half Seen Half Told works (2012-14) are inspired by the experience of how we are exposed to and learn from history, and exactly whose history is recorded and by whom. Making images at Southern plantations of slave cabins, grand houses and at re-enactment events of ‘living history’, my process of image making includes inverting images, pictures made out of focus or only half represented, leaving the 'lost' half' as a marker of 'the other'. The use of out of focus relates to a historical/memory and image layering speaks to the entwining of histories where you cannot see one, without seeing the other.

An addition to the original Bloodline series (see below) these images consist of 10 x 8 pinhole camera prints of the Capitol building in DC. Employing the process of mis-applied cyanotype emulsion on watercolor paper, and selective masking these new works add to the earlier Bloodline series. Images speak to the emphasis placed on lineage and race in the current US political climate. Created in the uncertainty before the 2012 election, I question if we really are able to surpass the historical hurdles of 'the old guard' and ready to embrace the new? The misapplication of photographic emulsion (cyanotype) alludes to the idea of the continuance of generational histories within families and the priority of this in the US system of politics.

Formerly living in the American South and making visits to the island of Barbados in the West Indies, these images speak to the legacy of slavery, the transportation across the middle passage and the lives lost as a result. The effect of the civil war on the African diaspora both in the U.S. and the West Indies and the abolishment and end to servitude and trade in human flesh are seen as a possible gateway to understanding ‘loss’ on an intimate scale. The emotional content of the works are 'felt' rather than seen and serves as an homage to those that died. The works in 'To and Fro' series encompass a new direction in relation to the history and connection to the Double Vision works. The 'To and Fro' prints integrate cyanograms made by contact printing coral and seaweed, found on the beaches of Barbados in the West Indies and their relationship to history and lives lost on a sea journey. Going backwards in time these images pay homage to those who perished on the treacherous voyages in the Atlantic triangle during the slave trade. Works also include diptychs of plantation houses and cyanograms, upside down seascape horizons and bleached abstractions; only a 'trace' of the original objects remain. As a destination point on the route from England via Africa, Barbados was a port where ships traded human and non-human goods, enroute to the Carolinas in the U.S.. By many accounts, the conditions for slavery in Barbados were some of the cruelest recorded. History records upwards of 2 million African's died on the boat journey from England to Barbados during the slave trade whose bones line the middle passage.

The Double Vision series investigates slavery's legacy of injustice and inequity. One's race and bloodline were important markers for the continuation and perpetration of this system of power imbalance oft called in the North that ‘Peculiar Institution'. As an outsider to the US, I question what lies beneath the grandeur and elegance of the plantation house, which is a powerful architectural and social symbol in the South. Along with looking at the main house I look at the grounds and the buildings that exist alongside it. The slave cabins (and the history of those that resided there) and outbuildings all were purposeful in their use to assist in production of food and maintenance and welfare of its workers. The small size of the cabins and the amount of occupants they held at one time seem incongruent in relation to the main house with its unique multiple rooms, high plaster ceilings and much fewer occupants. The pairing includes one scene from both the grand 'Georgian' house and one from the simple slave cabin as these abodes are inextricably linked in terms of family and heritage. The images are placed on each other at various opacities to produce a narrative that speaks to both images at once.The Double Vision series forces a conversation between two images at once. The two inextricably linked scenes from opposite sides of a plantation forces a connection to the past and present.

My research and creative activity has changed since moving to The South. I have enjoyed using new and different methods and mediums in my art practice such as an 8 x 10 pinhole and using alternative silver processes to reinforce my conceptual underpinnings of the work. These two series speak to race, power and the asymmetrical balance between them both now and the years before reconstruction. The Asymmetry and The Bloodline series (2008-2011) consists of 10 x 8 pinhole camera prints of interiors and exteriors of important houses in NC, VA and DC. Employing the process of haphazardly spreading the non-silver emulsion on watercolor paper, the Bloodline works speak to what little lived history of the enslaved populations was recorded (e.g., Berkeley Plantation, VA) compared to what histories are known and recorded from an Anglo-American perspective. The mis-application of cyanotype emulsion alludes to the idea of the continuance of generational histories within families. One's race and bloodline were important markers for the continuation and perpetration of this power filled system of imbalance oft called in the North, 'that peculiar institution'. The technology (or lack thereof) behind this series is linked to the conceptual ideas in the series. I am using the 10 x 8 pinhole camera (a technology available and used during the civil war era) to make simple images that obscure the complexity of that era. The pinhole is the simplest of cameras. Yet, I am challenged to depict complexity of the subject through simplicity in the final form of the work.

The Complicity series speaks to mob violence and the complicit nature of police brutality while in 'protective custody'. The subject is lynching; 1865-present and based on a case in 1899, about 45 miles from where I lived in North Carolina. The Complicity series was made for an exhibition at the DuSable Museum in Chicago for an exhibition called "Citizens Picnic: Lynching in America 1865- present". The images were made at Beaufort Jail in North Carolina after an 1899 New York Times article reports mob violence and a storming of the jail, with the result being an African American man being lynched without first being tried for his crime. Mob violence and deaths of inmates in police custody has a long history both in the US and Australia. The complicit relationship of the police to inadequately protect those incarcerated and a violent enraged mob wanting 'justice' is often what motivated these unlawful and horrendous acts. In this series I draw a parallel between Australian Indigenous Aboriginal 'deaths in custody' during the 1960's -1990's and illegal lynchings in the United States after the Civil War and during Reconstruction years. The exhibition 'Citizen's Picnic; Lynching in America 1865- present' was seen by over 25,000 people in Chicago. The Curator was Jomo Cheatham. The images in the Complicity series were made using a 4 x 5 camera and an 8 x 10 pinhole camera and are contact print cyanotypes, van dyke prints and toned cyanotypes.

Fortress explores the infamous Australian Prison 'Boggo Road' in Brisbane. Initially built in 1903 as a women's prison it was converted to a men's prison in 1921. In the Fortress series, decommissioned prison cells are mostly viewed from the supine position of the head ‘at rest’, as if the viewer was lying down looking up into the light. Power is inbuilt and obvious here. The architecture of the prison reveals through the bars on the windows, claustrophobic and tight views of the space's parts. These individual cells contrast the administration office image titled God Save the Queen whose ‘roomy’ interior is populated with an obligated standard representation of the supreme power of the current reigning ‘Her Majesty’, Elizabeth II. I project my own experience of the space through a psychic transcendent moment in day dreaming. Mind wanders to other places in time with different sights and environmental colors which are correlates the selected work. This dis-associative act of escape clashes with the harsh reality of being imprisoned.

A commission for the Ipswich Art Gallery of a Victorian era Church Manse in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. Seen and not heard plays homage to a child’s perspective. Shot from the head height of a child, the world seems oddly skewed with looming doorways, deep long passages, tall ceilings and the familiarity of close flooring. The ambiguous nature of these spaces parallels childlike states that may hover between keen anticipation to trembling fear, of whom may enter or exit these transitional in-between spaces. Re-contextualization speaks to how we may weave together memories of such places and participate in a shared experience of being. Both visually alluring and repelling, the works in the Seen and not Heard series, straddles the binaries of confidence/uncertainty and real/imagined through a palette of earthy hues that become more earthly from the ground upward.

Lucy Lippard has described Prison as a monastery inhabited by men who do not choose to be monks. ESP is based on my work done at Eastern State Penitentiary. The cell is a holding environment with an inbuilt narrative. Many have entered and exited these doors. Some have lived here for a short while, some for a long stint. Traversing the walls, eyes and fingers have scrutinized their surfaces. What was life like for these many inhabitants? How might traces of their days here remain? A ruptured membrane parallels what is perceptibly felt in my body and what I imagine life to have been like for its transient tenants. This is the motivation for making these images. The following words are used to describe my experience while there for a week in 2006. Journey, radial, quaker, stamp, still, deprive, influence, blood, solitary, sense, penitence, folly, systemic, curb, hours, quiet, power, architecture, lost, contradict, progressive, god, denial, darkness, hood, capacity, silent, slit, echo, tap, control, whisper, punish, rat, arterial, clanking, rehabilitation, systemic, shadow, rot, claustrophobic, withdrawal, ideal, rant, ownership, waste, stifle, look, routine, sense, work, madness, time, birth, hard, alone, reality, key, harshness, second, regret, shiver, lack, model, rejection, cold, pace, insanity, ability, energy, censorship, cold, insufferable, cherry hill, philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Solitary confinement is a construct to manage social turmoil effectively within the larger context of the prison. It is architectural apparatus for sustaining a power relation over the body. The route and transmission of the gaze and where this is located for the institution, the one incarcerated and the viewer of the photographic work prompts questions regarding external control (by the institution), internal control and self exploration (by the constrained) and the negotiation of this felt tension (by the viewer) when confronted by the work. The role of the viewer becomes the locus for this dialectic at the site of exhibition and the straddling of this in-between troubled space. The In/Carceral works are single images of regulation cell interiors that reveal a diverse topology of incarceration. Adjusted, Raw and Untitled (women’s cell) unify as spaces of claustrophobia and darkness. Rare and Untitled 2004 are studies of interior wall textures and reveal a hidden construction that translates as feminine.

The prison cell as a space of the constrained body and site of possible psychic transcendence, and the harsh reality of imprisonment and deprivation in solitary as supposed rehabilitation, are two counter narratives my work examines. A further line of enquiry includes the viewer and what role does she or he play in this macabre theatre of power relations? Exploring the tensions between imagination, the objective world and human experience foregrounds my attempt photographic survey of cells at Fremantle prison. The colour mural prints that are Distraction, offer a translation of the visceral shock of confinement. They provide different views of spatial similarity, yet are singular in their geographies and topologies. A bruised palette of colour highlights a relationship of the body, vision and thoughts of life beyond the solitary cell. The Distraction series becomes an extreme metaphor for tensions of our own will toward the confines and structures of our own society and the transcendence of these constraints through a conscious awareness of their existence.

A former Honeymoon Resort in the Pocono's (PA) that has seen better days.

Luminosity by the sun, of interior domestic space enables us to engage with the physicality of the space and our bodies relationship to it, yet in light’s absence and man’s attempt at mimesis through electricity and light sources, our body’s relationship to space shifts. The DisCharge series (Bedroom, Kitchen and Study) utilizes illumination from a power source as the camera confronts the light from the position of the floor. The obvious physicality of bedrooms and kitchen are obscured in favor of a distrait view that encompasses the ceiling as planar. The impressions of ceiling fixtures herald an affiliation with visual perception, notions of ‘the other’ and the sublime nature of ‘the void’.

Discoloration subtly explores domestic walls and ceiling corners from skewed angles using a square format camera. The room’s construction translates as feminine. These works are printed to approximate my own flesh tone in order to accentuate the confrontation (and construction) of gender and architecture. The colour foregrounds a conscious participation in a skin-as-wall metaphor that allies the surface marks of a timeworn space to that of a body’s epidermis.

Utilizing transient suburban rental spaces in Chicago, Stairs, Untitled (Martha’s room) and Ambivalence aim to interpret and visually articulate specific concerns of duality existing within and across these in-between spaces. Natural light pours in from dressed and undressed windows highlighting specific textures and surfaces. This can evoke a palpable sense of absence/presence. Mural size prints are of unfurnished, untenanted spaces in limbo, awaiting habitation; illuminated domestic spaces in which something is felt by the viewer, rather than merely seen.

These works were part of a group of artists involved in early digital technology and alternative processes in Brisbane, Australia. Buried in Cotton, was an exhibition of large scale palladium and platinum prints that featured the work of Marian Drew (AUS), Maurice Ortega-Montiel(AUS/MEX), David Michael Kennedy (US) and several other artists. At that time, these were the largest palladium prints to be produced in Australia using digital negatives. Buried In Cotton, was shown at Gallery 492 in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.

Temporary ground concentrates on the almost instant transience that can befall the typical suburban Queensland dwelling. The trend of urban developers to remove and transport homes from their original address to make way for high-density ‘modern’ inner-city abodes is rife. These former dwellings are carted to a disused patch of dirt on the highway out of town, propped up or hastily put back together as a façade of their former selves – ready for re-sale, removal and re-stumping. What we are left with possibly is a fast fading identity.

My work has evolved out of a persistent curiosity about interior built spaces, how we inhabit them and their relationship to the body. My images are unified by the notion of the ‘house’ as a dystopia where domestic space enables control and containment of the body operating within a system of power that is reinforced through architecture. In these images, bedrooms and hallways; kitchens and living rooms function as temporary uneasy holding spaces rather than spaces of comfort, invitation and warmth. Through saturated color and skewed perspective I reveal arterial spaces of in-between-ness that momentarily enclose the body yet allows for departure through open portals of light.

The Frostings series consists of 3 works. All are type C prints and are 100cm x 100cm. 2000/2001

My art practice is typified by a consistent exploration of the enclosed Australian domestic sphere and has evolved through questioning photographically, the nature of ‘interior space’. Underlying my investigations is a concern that the domestic interior is not only a container of time, but also a receptacle of past actions and energy, which may become imprinted and may be perceived to be active on the space long after its inhabitants’ have departed. Imaging suburban spaces such as rental houses in the neighbourhoods of Brisbane, my images aim to interpret and visually articulate specific concerns of ‘duality’ that may exist within them and between them. Natural light pours in from dressed and undressed windows of these ‘in-between’ spaces, highlighting specific textures and surfaces. This can evoke an almost palpable sense of absence/presence. Large mural size prints are of unfurnished, untenanted spaces in limbo, awaiting habitation. These representations are not about emptiness, but more about memory and the vestiges of past inhabitants, mementoes of both a past and a future.

The Silence series consists of 5 images, all type C prints, 40" x 50 or 50 x 40". 1999

The Chinese Whispers series consists of 2 triptychs, 6 images in total. Made in China in 1998 these images are shot in hotels and dormitories in Beijing and the surrounding provinces.

My investigations of light and space include a concern that the domestic interior is not only a container of time, but also a receptacle of past actions and energy, which may become imprinted and may be perceived to be active on the space long after its inhabitants’ have departed. My colour images are photographs of illuminated domestic spaces in which something is felt by the viewer, rather than merely seen.

The Big Silence series consists of 7 images. All are type C prints. Sizes are 40" x 50 or 50" x 40". 1997