Joe JOHNSON

O campo de jogos

Em seu trabalho, Johnson se interessa pela arquitetura como forma de construção não de espaços físicos mas sim de lugares sociais, explorando-a como uma forma de controle social. Por isso, nessasérie, ao fotografar os cassinos de Reno enfatiza o aspecto artificial, especular e labiríntico de seus interiores, a fisicalidade da luz que polariza escuros e claros  e a gigantesca escala da estrutura que contrasta com a humana.

Columbia (USA)

With my ongoing project, The Playing Field, I am connecting a career long fascination with architecture as a form of social control with a more place specific focus.  My interest in casino architecture grew out of a previous project on mega churches.  Both entities can be said to house a faith based ritual practice.  Sacred and profane, mega churches and casinos share a consonant architectural syntax: a merging of ritual practice with a sense of spectacle, thereby building an incongruous scale relationship between the structure and the inhabitant.

I chose to make this work in Reno, Nevada because the casino spectacle is delivered there with varying degrees of success.  One may observe the seams in the veneer. The dated nature of the structures (some in foreclosure) along with an unforgiving high desert light, humble the grand claims being made by the casino architecture.

Reno accommodates a great many extremes and I continue to photograph these polarities: the complexity of the dark, labyrinthine casino interiors contrast the specular physicality of the exterior light, and mammoth scaled casinos contrast the diminutive sized human.  Reno is where fantasy and chance, winning and losing, hope and failure, may all be found in one place.