Taking its cue from a recent Patti Smith concert where the singer’s malapropism resulted
in associations of burning, light, and combustion
(“Born in Bremen” results in Born in Brennen), Koopman’s second
monograph explores the critical and humane conditions existing between
the poles of protest and routine in a globalized landscape. Photographs
document hastily improvised crowd control barricades and security reinforcements,
frumpy camouflage draped over doorways and stairwells, sullen protestors
and armored troops at global summits.
Shot between 2001 and 2009, Born in Brennen features photographic essays
shot across the globe, punctuated by conversations, fragments, and correspondence
with a number of contemporaries. Through a series of neologisms suggested by
the book’s subtitle — “Architecture of anxiety, Camouflage, Demoland,
Discobedience, Placed” — a final chapter of intimate black-and-white concert
portraits are linked to earlier demonstrations of dissent and resistance,
but never explicitly valorized. Indeed, instead of asserting over-determined connections
between crowd action, performance, and resistance, Koopman’s photographs
register a pervasive ambiguity— a sense of confusion, displacement, and inconsistency