Waiting for the End of the World
June 13th, 2005by Richard Ross
ISBN: 1568984669
This slim softcover volume is the size of an extra-wide trade paperback, unlike the hardcover coffee-table sized Museology. The two books share an interest in the unexpected view. Ross was poking around behind the scenes in museums in the earler book, and this time he is poking around in bomb shelters.
The resulting photographs are unsettling, disturbing, and beautiful — sometimes all at once. Ross is aware of this, saying, in a short interview included in the beginning of the book:
I feel guilty about the existing beauty in some of the images. After years of photographing and working with light, I can take a pile of rubbish, light it intensely, and make it look like magic. These places are chilling physically with a preponderant, eerie stillness. I think they have a distinctly diabolical beauty .
Ross isn’t arrogantly boasting here — he knows the impact of these images, and he recognizes his own (considerable) skills. It is bizarre to see a deep blue expanse of sky, snow-capped mountains, tan fields, and then realize the man-made features which both are and are not the focus of the image are air vents for a bomb shelter. Or notice the purple edges of light cast on a wall are there because a hatch door has swung open. Or know that the seemingly cheery purple, yellow, green and pink doors given a “personal touch” are built to exact specifications of materials and thickness.
One can almost feel the cool, damp air and hear dull metallic echoes looking at the photographs of long, tubular hallways. The stack of supplies — from packages of Dial soap to cans of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup — look both familar and out of place. Some Swiss shelters are rented out to tourists on vacation. Ross’s photographs of one of these include odd red balloons scattered on the floor. One Russian shelter has been converted and is now “The Trendy Griboyedov Club” featuring a dance floor and bar.
Yet, these are still photographs of odd, secret places. Whether they are decaying (like the inch-think mold in an alternative headquarters prepared for Churchill, or flooding in Moscow apartment building shelters) or filled with rows of books, comfy living room chairs and carpeting, these spaces seem somehow expectant. They aren’t right, but people nevertheless felt them necessary.
Not all of the photographs are of old structures, either. Ross photographed a shelter under construction in Utah, and the Greenbriar’s blast doors built to protect Congress weren’t revealed until 1992. The Swiss government mandates that citizens maintain shelters. Religious sects, the paranoid and the wealthy are still building shelters. The more ominous images were of the empty surgical rooms; the most mundane included excercise equipment and filing cabinets. Over and over, each image of metal hallways, rows of sinks, beds, and assemblages of junky furniture issue invitations to the imagination: what would it be like to sit in these rooms, inspect behind closed doors or under covers, what would it be like to stay here, to live here? Would you want to?
With these photographs, Ross documents the human condition — which he describes as “looking at things you would rather not confront” and finds both quirkiness and hope. Recommended.
