Notes from Various Front Lines

Abstract

Reflections on Ten Years of War Since 9/11. Silver Eye Center for Photography Pittsburgh September 13-December 10, 2011 HomeFrontLine: Reflections on Ten Years of War Since 9/11, co-cnrated by Ellen Flenrov and Leo Hsu, featured work by eleven photographers and photojournalists exploring the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The collection of images included in the exhibition did what good phonography does best: offer windows and mirrors, those portals and flashpoints that allow questions. As is her strength. Nina Berman made us examine ourselves and our home turf. Her photograph Boy and Girl at U.S. Marines Recruiting Event, Orchard Beach, The Bronx, New York, 2007 (2007) as well as her series Homeland (2003) force us to acknowledge the degree to which militarism permeates our non-combatant lives. Bcrman's image of youth simulating a terrorist attack is the new normal, and her image of a girl donning military gear over her bikini at a beachside Marine recruitment event generates curiosity more than a voyeuristic gaze, revealing much about the concessions we make in delineating the slippery concept of homeland. Freed: Faces of Guantanamo (2008), Alfonso Moral's portraits of men previously detained at Guantanamo Bay, reveals further evidence of the collective work of defending freedom, found in die stamp of accusation embedded in the facial lines of the now-freed detainees. Encountering these portraits provokes a search for truth: Did they really commit terrorist acts? Can I tell by looking at their feces? Photographed in Afghanistan in 2008, Moral's photographs generate a line of questioning that is often avoided: What is being done in our name? Like the infamous photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison, these pictures while not providing the same kind of graphic shock contain the certain ugliness of a secret (torture, false witness, actual terrorism) that isn't really a secret. This exhibition's intent was to create a space in which to pause and to think about this decade of war in the aftermath of 9/11 and the enormous human, social, economic and political costs incurred. The exhibition's portraiture focused on the costs incurred by the living. Kevin Bubriski offers black-and-white psychological portraits of New Yorkers staring into the pit of Ground Zero in Pilgrimage: Looking at Ground Zero (2001), while Gabriela Bulisova's project Option of Last Resort: Iraqi Refugees in the United States (2010) shows us the suffering of Iraqi refugees now settled in the U.S., reminding us that more than two million people have fled Iraq. On the other hand, one might question the efficacy of projecting video of U.S. soldiers on patrol, as in Miehael Kamber's video Soldiers on Patrol in Iraq (2008). While access is certainly crucial to war photographers, and is a point Kamber seeks to make, as curators, as cultural commentators, as artists, we have lo ask ourselves about the gallery's ability to translate the fast pacing and context of war, as well as war's certain suspension of social and moral codes. Though Kamber's video is shot close to armed soldiers as they patrol Baghdad streets, can we expect cultural consumers lo meet these quick-and-dirty moving images with any real understanding of war action? Kambcr asks us to consider censorship (content), but. perhaps a more tempered view is to consider the context of this work. contrast to Kamber's video, Claim Beckett's series In Training (2006), lush 4x5 portraits of the recently enlisted. offers the stillness associated with the format, and it works. The late-adolescent soldiers evoke compassion on one hand, and self-consciousness of our steady, slow gaze on the other. None of the subjects address us and all possess a slightly miserable look. …