What is in a name? What is in a date? Jack Garland’s new book, waco, small w noted, is full of cryptic keys, signatures, and clues that open a dialog with the viewer starting with its title. Inside the book, beautiful black and white photographs permeate the pages, a long-distance nod to the pioneering work of Robert Adams, and Lewis Baltz, but with a position more suited toward John Gossage. The photographs sometimes present as formal, but then are given a complexity in their ordering and then finally, their patchwork of clues for the viewer to investigate. It is not an easy book. It does not have one reading, but many, and in this, it makes the premise (s) of the work fluid, open to projection and participation.
Where is waco? Who is waco? When is waco? And what is our taxation? To whose fever dream does the book’s production apply? Is it conditional to the surrendering moment of a country fixated between bliss and oblivion or have I already said too much…let whispers be our guide…for without them, silence would be the victor…
