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Greg Girard: Pacific Strangelove

Clark & Faria, Toronto Oct 15 to Nov 15 2009
Greg Girard  <I>Negishi Housing Area (US Navy) #1, Yokohama, Japan</I>  2009  Courtesy of Clark & Faria Toronto  Greg Girard Negishi Housing Area (US Navy) #1, Yokohama, Japan  2009 Courtesy of Clark & Faria Toronto

Greg Girard <I>Negishi Housing Area (US Navy) #1, Yokohama, Japan</I>  2009 Courtesy of Clark & Faria Toronto

Nothing quite summarized the Bush years in the White House so much as the release, in the spring of 2002, of the Pentagon’s Unified Command Plan, which neatly divided the planet into six military regions, each with its own US command acronym: USNORTHCOM, USSOUTHCOM, USCENTCOM and so on. The level of presumption of this plan was stunning, and its implicit assumption of US global control was chilling. In Greg Girard’s new show “Half the Surface of the World,” the China-based photographer presents a series of images from more than 20 US military bases and communities within the realm of USPACOM, the Asia-Pacific component of the plan that literally comprises half the surface of the earth. In Girard’s images we see a combination of aging Cold War aircraft and residential gated communities. The impression his images leave is of an absurdist, yet serious, notion that nuclear warfare is perhaps just a tool for the protection of banal suburban bungalows and the lifestyles they support. It is a series of images that makes the power-brokering of the US seem itself a relic. (55 Mill St, Toronto ON)

This article was first published online on October 29, 2009.

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