Out of the darkness they come, like Orpheus blinking into the light, or that mob of dead souls called up by Odysseus to drink from a puddle of blood. The subjects of these photographs are all, or most of them,…
Torture is still in the air. Only two months ago, United States Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that no further action would be taken to prosecute anyone for the deaths of two men held by the CIA, one in Iraq…
By STEPHEN V. KOBASA There was a box near his kiln full of all the pots he had shattered, like a collection of shards for Job to scratch his festering skin with. I was neither outraged nor saddened by this,…
By STEPHEN V. KOBASA These woods are dark and deep; but they are not lovely. This is Ori Gersht’s video panorama, The Forest, made in 2005. A stand of trees, indistinct voices, one crack of sound. A hunter, or an…
By STEPHEN V. KOBASA A festering of unnatural light around the corner from the exhibition entrance, the fluorescent wall is not glorious, but painful. There is no slant to the truth being told here; no “explanation kind,” as Emily Dickinson…
By STEPHEN V. KOBASA Wearing a white linen suit, Theodore Roosevelt sits inside the metal cab of a steam shovel during his visit to the newly dug Panama Canal. The workers in the photograph hardly register – they are edges…