In The Playroom With The Meticulous Jonathan Hobin

The impact the images is heightened by the entirely plausible scenes that Hobin has created around the children. There’s nothing odd about a young boy crashing a toy plane into something — Lord knows I crashed enough model cars/planes/ships into walls or furniture or momentarily inattentive siblings. Another photo, A Boo Grave, is a comment on U.S. abuse Iraqi prisoners, but could actually be an image children dressed for Halloween — except for Hobin’s dark tweaks. As a Halloween costume, that black robe one child wears seems ominously out place, and the Twin Towers image includes tiny human figures plunging from the buildings.
“The playroom is a metaphor for the impossibility a protective space from the world,” Hobin says. “It’s a metaphor for all the things that kids experience in the world, and how it’s all in their heads. This is an exaggeration how it might come out.”
Kids know these dark things, even if they haven’t been taught them or discussed them with adults, he says, and he provides a lucid example. “No kid needs to be shown how to hold a handgun, they all just know, they pick it up and they know. . . It never needs explanation.”