Richard Ross: Architecture of Authority

For the past several yearsand with seemingly limitless accessRichard Ross has been making unsettling and thought-provoking pictures of architectural spaces that exert power over the individuals within them. From a Montessori preschool to churches, mosques, and diverse civic spacesa Swedish courtroom, the Iraqi National Assembly hall, the United Nationsthe images in Architecture of Authority build to ever harsher manifestations of authority: an interrogation room at Guantnamo, segregation cells at Abu Ghraib, and finally, a capital-punishment death chamber.