Susan Sontag observed in On Photography, "One's first encounter with the photographic inventory of ultimate horror is a kind of revelation... a negative epiphany." Mat Collishaw's Deliverance explores this shock effect of disturbing photography on the psyche. In the main room, staged disaster shots — indigent children fleeing an unknown threat, a mother clutching her distressed infant — are projected in rapid succession onto gallery walls slicked with phosphorescent paint. Displayed concurrently with a flashing strobe, the photographs' afterimages linger before fading, producing a phantasmagoric effect. Two daguerreotypes outside the main installation lend these same images a miniature, spectral quality that's just as arresting. Collishaw's latest work elaborates simultaneously on the omnipresence of crisis imagery in the media and the fleeting nature of the photographic medium.

-Cynthia Lugo

Mat Collishaw's work is also on view at Haunch of Venison in London, through August 31.