Obsessed with photographing the interiors of mausoleums, John Allan Faier comes up with large-format color images in which the spaces that he shoots when they are unpopulated exude an overwhelming sense of lonely gloom, although they invariably contain stained-glass, uplifting religious statuary and various and sundry spiritual incitements. The mood of heavy oppression comes from the fact that the rooms are often dimly lit, but for pools of light cast by lamps; and from the modest, sometimes tacky, chairs and sofas for living visitors to the houses of the dead. Far from the site of a celebratory wake, the mausoleum, with its steel vaults, is a place that is dominated by the shades and that seems to exist for them rather than for full-blooded interlopers. Faier documents a culture that is determined to be somber about death; his images recall the uncomfortable feelings that some of us experience when we are called upon to “say something” to the bereaved and are impelled to feign piety. (Michael Weinstein)
Through March 28 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington
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