This year, British photographer Jack Latham won the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award—now, he’s about to open a show at TJ Boulting which explores the effects that “a vacuum of information can cause”. It is called, fittingly for this lead image, Parliament of Owls. The artist was inspired by Bohemian Grove, a super-exclusive retreat in Monte Rio, northern California, that is visited every summer by members of the US’s business and political elite. Latham explores the secrecy that exists in such places, which has often led to conspiracy theories. In 2000, the founder of Infowars (a far-right American conspiracy theory and fake news website) broke into the grounds in an attempt to expose the “new world order”. “Beyond inspiring a bizarre attack on Bohemian Grove by a masked vigilante calling himself the Phantom Patriot in 2002,” says the gallery, “the release of the video footage, set within an alarmist context, was instrumental in increasing Jones’ profile as a far-right activist and subsequently springboarded infowars to become an influential outlet of fake news in recent US politics.”
