In the framework of the and in partnership with the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, we present 15 works by renowned contemporary photographer Simon Norfolk.
The thematic cycle to which the exhibition photographs belong is entitled , a project which can only be described as an attempt by the artist to capture and comprehend the ways in which war – and the human need to wage war – have shaped our world.
After extensive work on the theme of genocide in the 20th century in various parts of the world, Norfolk has visited many different places in an attempt to explore the manifestations of war in greater depth. Using a 19th century wooden field camera, he brings to mind photographers such as Roger Fenton and Mathew Brady, whose static shots, on account of the photographic technology available at the time, were more suggestive of the atmosphere on the battlefield.
At a time when television offers live coverage of events wherever they are happening in the world, when photographers are forced to comply with the communications strategies of the military, and as the brutality of war has now been more or less integrated into iconographic norms, Norfolk attempts to explore the underlying characteristics of the phenomenon.
In Afghanistan he reveals successive strata of the construction and destruction wrought by wars and guerrilla warfare over a period of twenty-five years [...]. The photographer himself notes the affinity between war photography and archaeology, asserting that ‘anyone interested in the effects of war quickly becomes an expert on ruins.’
His colour photographs make ample use of the detail provided by large-format, while great care is taken in both composition and the relationship between form and light, without resorting to aestheticisation.
His photographs are sometimes accompanied by captions, providing background information that subverts the apparent neutrality of a landscape. In Bosnia, for example, we see a white, snow-clad landscape traversed by a dirt road leading to a red pond. The caption informs us that this is a site where industrial waste is dumped, and that during the civil war it was used as a mass execution and burial ground.
Another work shows a children’s playground in Israel, behind which tanks lie in wait, camouflaged by the bright colours of children’s toys – a reminder that, in some societies, war has a steady presence in daily life, hovering menacingly in the air.
Norfolk’s photographic records ultimately speak more eloquently about the things that are missing than those portrayed.
Excerpt from the catalogue of the group exhibition , presented at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, February 2006.
