Sarah Pickering has an uncanny knack for developing visual narratives designed to simultaneously scare and thrill the viewer. In her series, Explosions, which was exhibited at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in 2006, the bucolic English countryside is rocked by outbursts of napalm, land mines, artillery, and other kinds of ordnance. Photographed on military proving grounds where scaled-down versions of the real thing are detonated to prepare troops for combat, these images reveal how little we know about the actual theater of war - and how compelling it is to view a scene that includes a firestorm.

Left to Right: Cigarette Accident; Abduction; Electric Radiator, by Sarah Pickering, copyright the artist.

In her subsequent series, Fire Scene, Pickering delves into what might be the most fearful of thoughts: a fire at home. In scene after scene this fear becomes palpable as fire engulfs the contents of some clearly downscale homes. The titles she ascribes them only ups the ante: Glue Sniffing Kids; Insurance Job; Cigarette Accident; Makeshift Cooking.

Now this work, along with Public Order, a series based on police training for handling civil unrest, is collected into a book, Explosions, Fires and Public Order (Aperture 2010). Next Wednesday, Sarah Pickering will be joined by independent writer, lecturer, and curator Susan Bright for a conversation about the work, which together present an arresting glimpse into the secret world of civil defense.

Talk and book signing: Susan Bright and Sarah Pickering. Wednesday, March 31, 2010, 6:30 pm. Aperture Gallery & Bookstore, 547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY. 212.505.5555.
Sarah Pickering (born in Durham City, England, 1972) finished her MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in London in 2005. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Photographers' Gallery Graduate Award and a Jerwood Award. Pickering has exhibited internationally and in the UK where her work was part of How We Are: Photographing Britain, at Tate Britain.

Susan Bright is well known internationally for her contributions to the photographic world as commentator, exhibition curator, and author. She has taught extensively and convened major conferences and seminars on many aspects of art and photography internationally. Previous posts include Assistant Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Curator at the Association of Photographers, London, and Acting Director for the MA photography course (Historic and Contemporary) at Sotheby's Institute, London. Although raised in the United Kingdom, Bright was born in Western Australia. While based in London, Bright curated the 2007 exhibition 'Face of Fashion' for The National Portrait Gallery. Later that same year, she was co-curator of the landmark exhibition 'How We Are: Photographing Britain' at Tate Britain. As an author, Bright is best known for Art Photography Now, published by Thames & Hudson and Aperture, and her most recent book The Self Portrait in Contemporary Photography, which will be released in the fall of 2010.

032610