A decade ago Mat Collishaw made a name for himself as a connoisseur of catastrophe with works like Bullet Hole, 1988. This multipart photowork, which was recently featured in the “Sensation” exhibition at the Royal Academy, at first appears to be a close-up of a tropical flower with a dazzling red stamen; in fact, it is a forensic image of a bullet hole, surrounded by what looks like an aureole of human hair. In Collishaw’s more recent work, the connoisseur is still behind the camera, but he is less completely in control—as a result, there’s a newfound emotional complexity to his work that makes