Donald Weber
Interrogations
November 27 – December 20, 2014
Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M5V 3A8
Reception: Thursday, November 27, 6-9 p.m.
Circuit Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Donald Weber, from his award-winning project Interrogations, seen here for the first time in Canada.
The exhibition features twelve large-format photographs of suspected criminals being subjected to intense interrogation in an unnamed police station somewhere in Ukraine. This powerful series is accompanied by a selection of smaller photographs, which serve as a prologue.
Weber spent seven years traveling throughout Ukraine and Russia in an effort to understand and show something of life in the post-Soviet era. He observed how, since the collapse of Communism and its replacement with free-market Capitalism and an ostensible democracy, people are negotiating their places between ideologies, past and promised, and within “the system”.
Over the course of his research Weber became increasingly preoccupied with the subject of Power as exercised by the modern state, and how it deploys an all-encompassing theatre for its subjects. Amassed, his gritty photographs offer a complex portrait of people and a place, haunted by the past, and disillusioned with the present and its failure to provide a promised future.
Interrogations is the culmination of this seven-year project and a sharp distillation of subject and theme—one that seeks to go beyond the specificity of time, place, and individual, to reveal something more universal about the human situation.
Power is invisible, an abstract concept to which we are all subject. It can only be represented through its effects and consequences, its symbols and subjects (victims and perpetrators). Weber’s photographs from inside the interrogation room are simple stark images offering complex scenes.
Having gained the trust and permission of both the policeman and detainees to take photographs, Weber, as third party witness to the unfolding dramas (including the violent threats, aggression, and intimidation tactics of the policeman) focused his lens on the suspects, the men and women (and youth) who for whatever reason are brought in for questioning and find themselves in the room, subjected to interrogation.
Weber withholds context and specificity. We are not given information as to who they are, or the what, where, or why of their circumstance. Reduced to the confines of the room and to a succinct grammar of gesture and expression, Weber adeptly offers a series of types revealing a range of emotion and reaction: angry, defiant, pleading, ashamed, terrified, scheming, pliant, resigned.
We are unable to adjudicate guilt or innocence here. The implied indictment, it would seem, is not of the people portrayed nor is it limited to former Soviet states, but rather of the very idea of “the system” and the larger abuse of power and authority. The interrogator, rarely seen in the photographs, becomes the embodiment of Power itself in these emblematic dramas played out on the small stage, within the confines of the room.
This is a work which intelligently asks and invites all sorts of interesting and important questions about photography and the photographic situation as much as it does about the interrogations themselves.
The exhibition is curated by Claire Sykes with a catalogue essay by Randy Innes.
Artist Bio
Donald Weber is a photographer fascinated by the subject of power (be it economic, political, or psychological) and how it deploys an all-encompassing theatre for its subjects.
His Interrogations project and accompanying book (Schilt, 2011) has received notable recognition and accolades from World Press Photo, PDN, Aperture, and many others. It was preceded by Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl (2008) which won the Photolucida Book Award.
Weber’s numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Duke and Duchess of York Photography Prize, and two World Press Photo prizes. Most recently he was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award. He is a member of the acclaimed VII Photo agency.
Artist page: Donald Weber
Curriculum Vitae (CV)
DOWNLOAD
Donald Weber CV [PDF]
Works Exhibited
Prologue
Vorkuta (Place teems with bears), from the series Drunken Bride, 2008
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ x 26.67″; Edition: 3 + 1AP
Vinnitsa, Ukraine (Over 9000 shot and buried, 1939), from the series The Last Things They Saw, 2009
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 20″ × 30″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 26.67″ x 40″; Edition: 3 + 1AP
Swallow’s Nest (Dneprodzerzhinsk), from the series The Underclass and its Bosses, 2005
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Gravedigger, from the series Drunken Bride, 2008
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Lena (Natasha), from the series Zek Y Natasha, 2007
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ x 26.67″; Edition: 3 + 1AP
Steal a man’s bread and you die. Sakhalin Island, Far East Russia, from the series Drunken Bride, 2009
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Nastya, 16, but probably younger (Natasha), from the series Zek Y Natasha, 2007
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ x 26.67″; Edition: 3 + 1AP
The Uprising of 1953, Vorkutlag, Northern Siberia, from the series Drunken Bride, 2008
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
The Choker, from the series Zek Y Natasha, 2007
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ x 26.67″; Edition: 3 + 1AP
Sunday Evening, Ukraine, from the series Drunken Bride, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
April 26, 2008, Vorkuta, Russia , from the series Drunken Bride, 2008
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ x 26.67″; Edition: 3 + 1AP
The Case of Comrade Anichkov, from the series Drunken Bride, 2008
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Kirov, Sergei Mironovich assassinated December 1, 1934 (The Great Purge begins), from the series Drunken Bride, 2008
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Cow, Girl. Zholtye Vody, Ukraine, from the series Into the Half-Life, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 18″ x 12″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 30″ × 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ x 26.67″; Edition: 3 + 1AP
Interrogations
Interrogation XI, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Interrogation IX, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Interrogation I, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Interrogation V, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Interrogation II, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 64.5″ x 43″; Edition 3 + 1AP
Interrogation XII, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Interrogation VIII, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 64.5″ x 43″; Edition 3 + 1AP
Interrogation X, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 64.5″ x 43″; Edition 3 + 1AP
Interrogation XV, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Interrogation IV, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 64.5″ x 43″; Edition 3 + 1AP
Interrogation XIV, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Interrogation XVI, from the series Interrogations, 2010
Medium: photography; archival pigment print
Size: 30″ x 20″; Edition: 6 + 2AP
Size: 40″ × 26.67″; Edition: 6 + 2AP