Checked Baggage : 3264 prohibited items

Christien Meindertsma
Checked Baggage : 3264 prohibited items

Photographs: Christien Meindertsma

Text: Hans Boutellier

Publisher: Soeps Uitgeverij

322 pages

Year: 2004

Comments: Softcover, 215 x 150 mm. First edition, 2004. Text in english and in dutch. Design by Christien Meindertsma. The edition comes packaged with one of the 'prohibited items' that appears in the photographs (multifunction tool with pliers, knife, file, etc). In very good condition if we except a little denting on the front cover (because of the pliers placed on top of it). Otherwise, fresh copy in very good condition. Included in The Photobook by Parr & Badger, vol.2.

Christien Meindertsma's first book Checked Baggage is a conceptual art piece that addresses another fascinating aspect of contemporary life. After 9/11, Meindertsma purchased a container of a weeks worth of objects confiscated at security checkpoints in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Due to the heightened security, nail files, scissors, pocketknives, corkscrews and any other sharp object were not allowed in hand luggage. Meindertsma then set about categorizing and photographing all of the 3264 prohibited objects on a white seamless background as if for a sales catalog.

The resulting book causes the viewer to reassess these objects in terms of their potential danger in our post-9/11 world. The ability of a few hijackers to take control of planes with a few box cutters has now created an atmosphere where even a child's pair of scissors or a cigarette lighter is subject to deeper suspicion. Meindertsma's book raises this issue as many of the objects featured seemed to mock seriousness of the baggage checker's notions of what can be considered dangerous. In this new "war on terror" do these security tactics actually make us safer or is there a deeper, more sinister reasoning behind the continual screening and curbing of individual rights for the sake of the greater "good?"