Dogs in cages

Darwell, John ORCID logo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8746-5315 (2011) Dogs in cages. [Show/Exhibition] In: Confined, 13 May - 10 July 2011, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, UK. (Unpublished) Full text not available from this repository.

Item Type: Show/Exhibition
Authors: Darwell, John
Corporate Authors / Creators: Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool
Abstract:

'Dogs in Cages' was commissioned by the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, as part of a larger international exhibition ‘Confined’ and shown as part of the Look ’11 photography festival, looking at the role of photography in questioning, documenting and responding to global issues of social justice. The work was based on the reported statement: ""Treat Them Like Dogs"" by US Major General Geoffrey Miller, then head of the US prisons in Iraq and looked at the nature of incarceration, using the dog as a metaphor to address issues that surfaced regarding the treatment of prisoners in both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib detention centres. Within this work, produced in a northwest dog detention centre, it was important to establish a strong emotional connection between viewer and subject without the work falling into cliché or oversentimentality. This was achieved by using strong differential focus, focusing on the bars of the cage, to allow the inhabitant of said cage to register as a ghostlike figure in the darkness, in an attempt to move away from the dog as an individual and concentrate on the physicality of the creature, echoing human postures, movement and expression. The exhibition featured nine large-scale individual images of said dogs in cages plus a triptych. The viewer was then guided through the image sequence in a manner whereby the last image they came to, the triptych, featured a human being in the cage placed between two images of pacing dogs, representing both the confined and those guarding them. The dogs now became both prisoners and guards, with the human placed between them bringing home the reality of confinement at an explicitly human level. A full colour catalogue of Confined was published to accompany the exhibition."

Official URL: http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/events/view/events/1...
Date: 13 May 2011
Event Location: Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, UK
Subject Headings: 700 ARTS & RECREATION (INCL. SPORT) > 770 PHOTOGRAPHY & COMPUTER ART > 778 Fields & kinds of photography
700 ARTS & RECREATION (INCL. SPORT) > 770 PHOTOGRAPHY & COMPUTER ART > 779 Photographs
Departments: Academic Departments > Institute of Arts (IOA) > Graphics and Photography
Depositing User: John Darwell
Date Deposited: 30 Jun 2015 14:51
Last Modified: 12 Jan 2024 10:01
URI: https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/1796
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