Burke + Norfolk. Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by John Burke and Simon Norfolk
Side have announced that the 'Burke + Norfolk' exhibition, which first opened in May this year at the Tate Modern, has travelled to Newcastle and will be hosted by Side Gallery from 10th December 2011 - 4th February 2012.
“The first ever photographs to be taken in Afghanistan were made by the Irish photographer John Burke (1843?-1900). His eloquent images form an extraordinary record of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), yet today he is virtually unknown. Simon Norfolk recognised in Burke’s photographs a humane and critical eye for the British colonial project and in 2010 travelled to Afghanistan in order to follow in his footsteps.
In what he terms a collaboration with his Victorian forerunner, Norfolk engaged in a kind of rephotography.
Burke’s diverse photographic output included landscapes, battlefields, archaeological sites, street scenes, portraits of British officers and ethnological group portraits of Afghans. Rather than artificially re-staging these compositions exactly, Norfolk identified contemporary equivalents, researching and travelling to Burke’s vantage points and developing a digital version of his wet plate technique.
As the singular ‘War’ in the exhibition title implies, Norfolk’s project is in part an indictment of the unrelenting impact of conflict and imperialism on the landscape and people of Afghanistan over the past 130 years. The echoing images that result from his partnership with Burke highlight points of continuity and change from either side of the twentieth-century in the war-ravaged country.”
No comments:
Post a Comment