Shreepad Joglekar: Non-Places of Intelligence

About

U.S. based Indian photographer Shreepad Joglekar's series Non-Places of Intelligence records military 'Live Fire Villages' - training facilities built in the American wilderness to simulate conflict sites in the Middle East. Intended to help personnel prepare for deployment, these compounds reveal enlightening and at times disturbing information about the strategies and perspectives of the armed forces and the tasks with which they're charged. Although Joglekar’s straightforward documents illuminate through their candour and restraint the significance of these sites’ purpose, it is not primarily a political effect the series generates, but rather a long-view consideration of broader issues around filtering, presentation, and the virtual real. Nonetheless, this exhibition offers extensive scope for debate and engagement with timely and important themes.

Born in Solapur near Mumbai and currently living and working in the USA, Shreepad Joglekar is a lens-based artist and professor of photography at Kansas State University whose work deals with human interactions and interventions in the ‘natural’ landscape, simulacra, representation and depictions of identity and place. With previous exhibitions in Canada, Cuba, Germany, Egypt, Poland, China and the USA, his work is held in significant international collections and has received awards including Biotic Semiotics (UWOSH 2012), Harper College Educational Foundation Art Collection (2015) and Re-Picturing Photography (2015).

Joglekar received his BFA from the Sir J.J Institute of Applied Art in Mumbai, India, and his MFA from Texas Tech University, USA. He has lectured and presented at conferences and workshops worldwide and written on the natural, cultural and built environments in a number of publications.