| Between
October 2004 and August 2005 Jason Oddy created an in-depth
photographic portrait of Playas, a one-time mining town in
New Mexico, USA . The work is an oblique document of a remote
desert outpost that has recently been purchased in its entirety
by the US Department of Homeland Security to be a real-life
training centre in the War on Terror. The project captures
the tension between the real and the fake of a place that,
sponsored by the US government, has become a backdrop for
all manner of imaginary disasters.
Oddy describes the
town and its residents as being on 'the frontline of a shift
in the way America is attempting to forge both itself and
the wider world.' The work can be seen as an attempt to document
this shift. In this new series Oddy asks how America's changing
political climate is altering the way its people relate to
the land and to the communities that they inhabit. It is a
body of work that asks us to reflect on our current fascination
with abstract notions of potential threats and projected disasters.
Jason Oddy lives and
works in London. His work has been published and exhibited
extensively in the United Kingdom, Europe and the USA and
is included in many private and corporate collections, including
Channel Four, Citibank and Deutsche Bank. A colour catalogue
will accompany the exhibition.
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