EDITORIAL:
Issue 56 — Autumn 2008
Issue 56 — Autumn 2008
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Photography has frequently been harnessed in the interests of 'security', its apparent impartiality making it an ideal means of bearing witness against individuals or states that are thought to be a threat. On a global level this is most dramatically demonstrated by satellite photographs that are now frequently presented as evidence of government wrongdoing. David Campbell says that although satellite photographs have a powerful aura of objectivity, understood in the light of history and their social and political context they may not appear so self-evident.
Diana Matar's father-in-law Jaballah disappeared from his family home in Cairo in 1990. It is assumed that, like several other Libyan dissidents, he was abducted and handed over to the Libyan regime. His family do not know whether he is alive or dead. Matar investigates how memories, the real and the imagined, intertwine with the political and social worlds in which she finds herself. In repeated visits to Cairo she reflects on what has changed since Jaballah was kidnapped, looking at the disappearance of the desert and the new building around the city.
Christopher Stewart's work is a further development of his long running examination of the security and surveillance industry. This project has its starting point in Stewart's failure to gain access to the interiors of Spain's multi-million-Euro surveillance system which monitors 70 miles of Spanish coastline closest to Morocco, where many clandestine migrants start their journey. Stewart negotiates his way between what is and what could be part of the surveillance system.
Richard Mosse's photographs of air disaster simulators are centred on a fascination with our perceptions of catastrophe. His work is introduced by Joanna Bourke author of Fear: A History. She notes that when it comes to flying the risk may be miniscule but the alarm is immense.
— The Editors