The Day Nobody Died
Whitechapel Gallery, London
I was going to adorn this piece with images - but I shall leave it as my notes and thoughts. I shall put images in another blog.
Adam and Oliver are war photographers and have worked together on 6 books. They talked through three bodies of work. Belfast, After Life and The Day Nobody Died.
Photography and war are linked - in both you are shooting people.
The camera is part of the event - if it is there it is impacting on what is happening.
Belfast Dots - they printed the parts of the negatives that had been hidden by the sticky dots on the contact sheets. These photographs had originally been taken by the people of Belfast during the troubles in the 70s and 80s.
After Life - using the original contact sheet they showed what had happened to each of the men during the 36 exposures the photographer had taken at the time the 11 men were shot dead. The photograph was taken in August 1979 showing the Kurdish prisoners being executed by firing squad.
The Day Nobody Died - they took 50m of photographic paper to the front line and exposed the paper (in the style of a photogram) to be "a register of the time rather than of the meaning".
I left this talk feeling angry, disappointed, insulted and disgusted in equal measure.
Disappointed
Disappointed that they did not show us any of their photography within these three bodies of work. In Belfast and Afterlife the photographs were manipulations they had done to other peoples photographs. And in The Day Nobody Died the exposed paper showed abstract splodges of colour and only made sense when accompanied by a talk or viewing the video - but that made little sense until you were given the context. I felt that they were curating not creating work. I felt cheated. They said they were being subversive by showing nothing in their images.
Disgusted
Disgusted by having to watch the 4 you tube videos which showed people being killed or dying. I very nearly got up and left. After seeing those videos however I did expect their work to better that in some way, with sympathy, with facts, with information, with something. I was also disgusted to see British Soldiers being used to carry around their box of light sensitive paper.
Insulted
I am in awe of what people will do to protect and help others. I believe that we should congratulate and celebrate what people are sacrificing by being a Solider. Suffering deserves a witness. On a day somebody did die to come back with just a splodge is just insulting.
Angry
I understand that to be heard, to be noticed, you have to be controversial - but to have gone to all that trouble to get to the front line and to come back with splodges does not do justice to what the men and women over there are doing for us. They asked "Do we think we are at war?" "Are we too removed?" There was discussion about how the media (and the MoD) sensor images taken. We might feel we are not at war as the images we see on TV and in newspapers show smiling soldiers - we do not see the horror. But it would take a foolish person not to realise what is going on. In my opinion it is the job of the war photographer to risk their life to show us what is happening, to show us the reality, to show us the truth. I do not feel this body of work does that.
Lesson learned:
That even if something is not to my taste or of interest it can fire you up enough to try something new for yourself. Either in reaction against it or to show how you could do it better. I shall never pass up the opportunity to go to things I do not like the sound of in future.
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