Vision, 2018 © Rachel Stern — *Vision, 2018* © Rachel Stern

Rachel Stern's latest photographic series, More Weight uses Arthur Miller's classic play as a metaphor for the chaos of present-day media, culture, and politics.

"More weight," Giles Corey's famous last words spoken while stones were being piled upon him at the end of Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a historical symbol of resistance to the tyranny of the Salem witch trials. Philadelphia-based photographer Rachel Stern uses these words as the title for her latest exhibition – on view at Brandeis University through October 26th – a metaphor for our current uncertain, often logic-free times. Her photographs are unapologetically staged and intentionally contrived, casting our current political and cultural climate as a theater of the absurd. I spoke with Stern to learn more about how this brightly colored pastiche of confusion relates to her ongoing practice and reflections on the world in which we live.

Rachel Stern in conversation with Jon Feinstein

Voyager 01 © Bill Finger

Voyager 02 © Bill Finger

Voyager 03 © Bill Finger

Growing up in the early 1970’s, Seattle-based photographer Bill Finger and his family would routinely gather around the television to obsessively watch the Apollo space launches. Even into into his early adulthood, he recalls being particularly moved by an NPR segment about sending a manned mission to Mars. This initially inspired Ground Control, a series about a fictitious character who tried, in vain to go to space; and more recently emerged in Voyager, circular photographs of immaculately produced dioramas that explore the complicated boundaries between fact and fiction, and self exploration.

Theater of the Absurd: Staged Photographs Reflect Witchcraft, Trumpism, and The Crucible

Photographing Time and Space From an Artist's Studio