Michael Weinstein

A photographer can go stir-crazy in a solitary-confinement cell and begin to hallucinate the most improbable visions. Shooting stark cells in decommissioned prisons in her native Australia in color and through filters, Annie Hogan puts us in the position of inmates seeing their desolate abodes transformed into burning and glowing scenes of spiritual epiphany. Under Hogan's ministrations, we see glaring white light diffused through a cell's tiny grating so that its cracked and scarred walls are bathed in subtle shades of rose or gold. The religious overtones of Hogan's images are inescapable; far from forbidding, the cells are presented as spaces for meditation and illumination in which the viewer wishes to dwell in monastic solitude. There is no irony here; solitary has never looked so good.

Annie Hogan's "Distraction" shows at Contemporary Art Workshop, 542 West Grant, (773)472-4004, through January 16.

(2004-12-21)

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