Bringing War Home

- Images taken Fall of 2008-

"Bringing War Home"
Large Format B&W Prints
Double Exposures with Stenciled Layer Mask

Civil War

World War II

Vietnam War

Iraq War

Inspiration:



In making each of these photos, the black shapes were made from actual images taken in each war. Meaning Hitler stands on the end of the WWII image and they are Iraqi solders hiding in front of the house. In this series I was thinking about the way war is portrayed, and how images are transient across time periods. When the weaponry is blurred to black, it is difficult to distinguish one time from another. The images steaming into our homes are a single dimensional portrait of war, which will never be able to depict the entirety of being in the battlefield. In this way, they become a cartoonist depictions shaped by our shallow comprehension of war and animated by our expectations of it's likeness.

Things, Not Stuff

Things, not stuff. Only the most beautiful things.

I recently moved out of my room- where I had lived for two years. I was amazed how much stuff I accumulated in just 24 months. Much of it was useless or excessive- three sets of sheets, birthday cards from three years ago, three pairs of polka dot rain boots, 24 chap sticks etc.

After packing up the contents of this space, I went for a walk with some friends through a park nearby my house. It was early in the evening, marked by the soft light of late summer casting through the trees, and I started collecting the above "things". Believing, at that time, they were the most beautiful things I could find- emphasized by the excellent lighting.

All of this got me thinking about possessions, specifically the difference between "stuff" and "things". Why to we hold onto things that are of no use to us? Is is for the sake of owning them? Or is it out of fear of not having them?

I don't know why I was so drawn to the various leaves from above. I think it was a reminder that sometimes simplicity can be more beautiful than anything else, but we are sometimes sifting through too much stuff to find it. These leaves were all that was needed to adorn the trees in their own lovely foliage. Perhaps, the best things are a few nice leaves collected from a stuffed forest.

I then made a pact with myself that in the future I would only keep the most beautiful and most valuable things, and to try to filter out the extra stuff which suffocates us everyday.

Annie of My Eye

Photograph from Book

Karen Finley at her home in Nyack, New York, 1992
Annie Leibovitz
"A Photographer's Life"