Life in civil society is a balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the group. As participants in such a society, we willingly restrain our actions and desires, or allow our actions and desires to be restrained, in keeping with the norms that the collective has established. Jason Falchook's photographs show us what happens when such restraints fade from consciousness and disappear beneath an acquired normalcy. His images of walls and fences are so mundane that we almost fail to notice that they obscure or block our vision. "Long Division (Access/Excess)” shows a landscape divided and blocked by a red fence and wooden slat wall. The tops of structures can be seen just beyond the taller fence further adding to the sense that the viewer is refused access to a larger vista. The cityscape and its structures direct our movement, dictating where we go, how we proceed, and how we use the space. Having become accustomed to these types of restrictions and manipulations in everyday life, one fails to question them or consider their affect on us.

Power lines slice through the blue sky, their shadows lying in the foreground of the image. The ubiquitous electrical and communication infrastructure in our landscape and consciousness not only brings us together but also ensures that we are never far apart. The global village becomes a global prison. Falchook exposes the underside of technology and the information highway by suggesting that the ghostly satellite dish and ever-present telephone lines may also function as tools of surveillance that record and transmit our actions and personal information. Because they are so familiar and useful, they fade into the background of awareness along with their more repressive aspects. Autonomy requires that the individual act freely and control the kind of information received and disseminated. Falchook's photographs show how that autonomy is attacked as inconspicuously and invisibly as the fence in our backyard or the telephone line that cuts across our field of vision.

Rudy Navarro 2004