ABSTRACT
The anticipatory scenes Pickering photographs are drawn from an archive of cultural knowledge; they are not "real" spaces, and yet one recognizes them based on cultural training. In 2007 and 2008, British artist Sarah Pickering took photographs at England's Fire Service College, one of the largest fire training centers in the world. Sarah Pickering and An-My Le have photographed at training centers where professionals practice simulations in order to prepare for anticipated events in the "real world." In the 29 Palms series, one sees soldiers in training, undertaking simulated operations. Colonel Greenwood peers through binoculars at an unknown object outside the frame of the photograph. Le has long been interested in how war is imagined, and in the years before her 29 Palms project, from 1999 to 2002, she photographed Vietnam War reenactors in Virginia to produce the series Small Wars. Although both exercises are about imagining war scenes, simulations and reenactments work toward different ends.
