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Broomberg & Chanarin / 2011

20 January - 12 February 2011
Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

In a new exhibition at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, South African born and UK based Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin bring together three powerful series produced in the past four years. People in trouble laughing pushed to the ground (2010), The Day Nobody Died (2008) and The Red House (2007) are all located within zones of conflict – Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq respectively.

At times hauntingly beautiful and engagingly uncanny, People in trouble laughing pushed to the ground was produced by Broomberg and Chanarin in response to an invitation to work with the Belfast Exposed photographic archive in Northern Ireland. The archive, established by photojournalists around the beginning of the Troubles in the early ’80s, is equally concerned with protests, funerals and acts of terrorism as it is with the more ordinary stuff of life – drinking tea, kissing girls, watching trains. In each instance, the presence of the archivist is discernable through a range of marks and incisions on the contact sheets. Broomberg and Chanarin acknowledge and thank the original photographers Mervyn Smith, Sean Mc Kernan, Gerry Casey, Seamus Loughran and all other contributing photographers to Belfast Exposed’s archive.

The Day Nobody Died was realised by Broomberg and Chanarin in June 2008 during a trip to Afghanistan, where they were embedded with British Army units on the front line in Helmand Province, arriving during the deadliest month of the war. On their first day a BBC fixer was dragged from his car and executed and nine Afghan soldiers were killed in a suicide attack. The following day the number of British combat fatalities was pushed to 100, with casualties continuing until the fifth day when nobody died. In response to these, as well as a series of more mundane occurrences, Broomberg and Chanarin turned an armoured vehicle into a temporary darkroom, producing a series of peculiar abstract forms modulated by the heat and light, presenting an alternative to the photographic documentation of war.

Artworks

C-Type print
153x 122 cm (165 x 135 x 6 framed)
Unavailable
C-type print
100 x 76.6 cm
C- type print
Work: 150 x 190 cm
Unavailable
C- type print
Work: 150 x 190 cm
Unavailable
C- Type print
Work: 153 x 122 cm
C-type print
100 x 76.6 cm
C-type print
152 x 122 cm (165 x 135 x 6 framed)
Unavailable
Fibre print
Work: 25 x 20 cm Frame: 27 x 22 x 3 cm
C-type print
100 x 76.6 cm
Unavailable
Fibre print
Work: 25 x 20 cm Frame: 27 x 22 x 3 cm
Fibre print
Work: 25 x 20 cm Frame: 27 x 22 x 3 cm
C-type print
100 x 76 cm
Unavailable
C-type print
100 x 76 cm
Unavailable
C-type print
100 x 76 cm
Unavailable
C-type print
100 x 76 cm
Unavailable
C-type print
100 x 76 cm
Unavailable
C-type print
100 x 76 cm
Unavailable
C-type print
100 x 76 cm
Unavailable
Fibre print
Work: 25 x 20 cm Frame: 27 x 22 x 3 cm
C-type print
100 x 76.6 cm
C-type print
100 x 76.6 cm