No Man's Land — Mishka Henner

No Man’s Land depicts isolated women occupying the margins of southern European environments, shot entirely with Google Street View.

The control and manipulation of vision is central to my practice, particularly the ways in which technology reshapes how we perceive reality. In a world saturated with images, I've become fascinated with the tools and systems that influence and often obscure our understanding of the spaces we inhabit.

No Man’s Land is one of my many attempts to reimagine documentary photography for the 21st century. It continues my investigation into the blurred lines between observation and surveillance, and photography’s potential to reveal hidden structures of power.

Archival pigment prints, billboard prints
Single-channel video (06:48 mins) & audio track (21:00 mins)
20x24 inches (51x61cm) / 46.9x 39 inches (119x99cm)
97x118 inches (248x300cm)
Softcover print-on-demand books, 8×10 inches (20×25 cm), 120 pages

Henner’s photographs articulate a very subtle but persuasive challenge to the manner in which we all become ‘resources’ to capital in the contemporary world, what the philosopher Martin Heidegger called a ‘standing reserve’: how, ultimately, we are all merely data to be processed and presented and somehow used. The prostitute, then, is simply presented as an instance of an ‘ideal subject’, as indeed she has been throughout the history of modern capitalism: simultaneously a small entrepreneur who is also her own product, and necessarily a consumer too. No Man’s Land, seen through this lens, is a layer on the map of technological capitalism, a cartography of its reach and its complex interconnections.

— Daniel Jewsbury, Source