Sarah Pickering at Daniel Cooney Fine Art

I initially had a muted response to Sarah Pickering's US debut show. At first glance there is little to recommend the series of mock explosions in terms of framing, printing, technique, etc. (I say "mock" because though the explosions are very real, they are practice pyrotechnics used in military and police training.) Upon further reflection, the choice of subject is weightier than I'd first considered.

Large Maroon by Sarah Pickering

Blake Gopnik's review in The Washington Post is mostly about explosions and little about the photographs themselves. What immediately came to my mind upon seeing the images were Dr. Harold Edgerton's strobe-lit abstracts of milk droplets and rifle bullets. A little investigation shows Edgerton also did some work on explosions, though his subjects were a bit bigger than Pickering's.

In the case of Edgerton's best known work, the value of the images lean heavily on making what is unseen seen - a milk drop frozen in time faster than the eye can understand or a playing card shredded by a speeding bullet. Likewise, Pickering's photographs freeze the destructive force of an explosion into a blooming sculpture of fire and smoke. In the larger images such as the one above, the explosions feel small and manageable in the expanse of the proving ground. These images do not, however, bring us closer to an understanding of war. On a different level, Pickering's photos harken back to some of the earliest photographs - still life of reproductions of classical masterpieces. They are a representation of a representation, distancing us a further generation from the original subject - the explosion of landmine or a napalm blast.

Through Feb 25 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 W 25th St, #506
(212) 255-8158