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Janine Gordon's work addresses a particular stealth violence and sexual candor that is specific to adolescent males (or post adolescent male yearning) as they relate to their peers at male-oriented events, their role within that sociological tier, and their individuality. Gordon mitigates the atmosphere in the Boxing gym, the dirt bike competition, and the Lalapalooza-type music festival. The pieces in the Dikeou Collection focus on the punk/rock/grunge concert moment, and that extremely trepid, yet violent happening known as the Mosh Pit. As a female, Gordon enters this very closed male system and photographs her subjects, really in situ, as they rebel rouse, dance, fight, congregate, urinate, punch, sing, spit, scream, and gesticulate. Capturing these movements, she is not unlike a sports photographer, who through unnerving position, allows us to see the fury, the motion, the aggression, the camaraderie, the unity, and the spirit of a team/teenage life, angst, and revolution -- the culmination of an age, gender, and event specific relationship. Like the filmmaker, Penelope Spheeris, whose The Decline of Civilization documents this extraordinary punk lifestyle, Gordon pulls the curtain, revealing that after 60 years of rock and roll, the stories are just as fascinating, just as wicked, just as much teen anthems as "Teenage Wasteland," "Pour Some Sugar On It," and "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Devon Dikeou |