Jonathan Hobin's "In the Playroom" disturbingly juxtaposes horrific current events and children's play with the intended purpose of exposing the deluded, but commonly-unquestioned belief that there is a "protective space safe from the reach of modern media".
Having nieces and nephews, and having been denied the possibility of seeing those born to my sister by their parents, the debate over whether or not children can be completely protected from encroaching reality, thus maintaining their "innocence" until old enough to mentally "handle" the often-unsettling, untidy and "shocking" whole truth of life, is something I have grappled with for some years now.
As Mr. Hobin alludes with these photos, the idea that children can be shielded from an all-pervasive media and the sometimes horrific information carried by it was a central concept of the chair of my graduate program in Media Ecology's (Neil Postman) book, "The Disappearance of Childhood". In it, Mr. Postman traced the history of the modern conception of "childhood" to the rise of literacy and the fact that we humans exist for a period between birth and adulthood where we cannot read - or do not have access to certain written material - and are therefore not privy to the "secrets" about life, sex, or what-have-you that are the realm of adults. After the advent of television (and later, the internet) the ability to restrict access to these secrets is seriously undermined and the result is a loss of "innocence" and - by extension - childhood.
As the son of an overprotective mother and now the brother of an excessively shielding sister, I'm acutely aware of the dangers of going to any length to maintain this innocence in a child and I hope Mr. Hobin's work incites debate and, ultimately, greater understanding regarding an appropriate mental and intellectual environment in which to raise a child.
In the meantime, click through all of Mr. Hobin's series and gasp, recoil and smirk to your heart's content.
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