War photography
Iâve just watched a wonderful short documentary about the photographer Simon Norfolk. Heâs a war photographer now, but not in the usual photojournalist sense. He goes into war zones after the battle is over and takes stunningly beautifulâbut also very humaneâphotographs of the effect of war on the landscape with a large format landscape camera. He consciously uses the language of Classical landscape painting: a beautiful landscape in the background, glowing light on the horizon, a ruined building, and an innocent shepherd boy in the foreground. The colours are rich, and he brings out all the detail and texture of these ravaged landscapes.
The photographs are shocking, but not because they are gory or graphic; they show the full devastion that war leaves in its wake, in all its beautiful, horrifying detail. Iâm always fascinated by the way artists talk about and approach their work. In the film he visited a site in Bosnia where mass graves containing over 600 bodies had been found. Mounds and pits were formed by the excavation, and the water in the hollows had frozen over. Simon decided not to take the landscapeâwhich would have been just documenting the site in a rather cold wayâbut focused on the air bubbles trapped in the ice. They made him think that people might still be trapped underneath, imprisoned, waiting to be revealed like the truth when the ice melted in the spring. The results were abstract and delicately beautiful, but when you know about the location, they are completely disturbing.
He also had a magnificent rant about the sterility and banality of modern art. Unfortunately, I didnât get an exact quote down, but he was saying that making a head out of your own blood isnât controversial or shocking, but the fact that human bones and body parts are uncovered when the villagers clear some land to make a football pitch is shocking.
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The two photographs in the link are incredibly clear and beautiful, aren't they? I especially like the one with the dark plume of smoke. For some reason I seem to find the balloons in the other one ... mmm ... offensive. That could be his point, I guess.----- Julie: He discussed the photograph with the balloons in the programme, and said that he saw the chap wandering around selling his balloons and was amazed at the paradox; the concrete building behind had been reduced to battered fragments, but his fragile balloons were still intact. Once you know that, I think your perception changes a bit. If he had posed the guy with the balloons, it would have been offensive.
by bsag @ 07/04/2004 7:04 pm • Permalink •
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> [last paragraph of your post]
hmm. sounds like the average London building site
by Saltation @ 07/04/2004 10:05 pm • Permalink •
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