SPE Presentation: Up in Smoke; scenes from a modern day battlefield

 I recently presented at the Regional SPE conference at Tallahassee, FL as an Image Maker. My presentation "Up in Smoke: scenes from a modern day battlefield" included works made over the last 3 years while I was in North Carolina. 

Abstract: “Up in Smoke: scenes from a modern day battlefield”

Annie Hogan reveals new directions in her art practice with the presentation of several new series that comment on various representations of the contemporary political landscape using US history as its protagonist.

Presenting images created over the last three years, Hogan examines the relationship between space, place, and the body through an outsider’s perspective. Hogan misuses traditional photographic processes to fortify her thoughts on history and its relationship to the present.

Hogan begins with the ‘almost there’ images of the ‘Asymmetry’ and ‘Bloodline’ series’ of grand Georgian houses that subtly suggest power structures embedded through their domestic contents and architecture as an indicator of what was written as history.

The ‘Double Vision’ images are layered and un-sharp images of interior and exterior views of plantation houses and slave cabins which embody the asymmetrical power relations inherent in ‘the peculiar institution’ prior to emancipation.

She continues with a recent series of stereoscope images printed as diptychs using a random process of juxtaposition. The ‘Now and Now not Then and Now’ series explore the reification of ‘living history’ / re-enactment days that glorify the ‘life and times’ of the Civil war.