Man-bags and stuff Pt.II

Well, I may have found it... my holy grail of bags (for now, anyway). The Landscape Satchel by Tanner Goods. I don't have one in my hand as they are made to order. And the price is a little... over the top end, for me anyway (especially as I saw a women with a really nice leather messenger bag after a gallery opening the other day and it cost her all of - $70.00).

Anyway, I like the look of this one - in all three colours actually. Black would definitely be my first choice though, followed by brown. I also like the idea of the removable zippered insert - pouches for this and that or just a big empty bag.

How did I miss this...? Buffet

(Andrew Phelps - Not Niigata)

I'm not sure how I missed this up until now, but photographer Andrew Phelps has a great blog up call Buffet.

As he describes it:

The Buffet is open........

Buffet is a collection of special editions, book + print sets, artist's books, print/book trades and various interesting ways in which photographers are packaging and selling their work. Some are sold through galleries and publishers, some by the artists. The only ones I am selling directly are my own. I'm not a dealer (more of a junkie) so I am not getting a cut of these sales, I am just a photographer interested in work which is in my price range.

(Nicholas Gottland - Wild Prayer)

Anyway, there's some great stuff in here (as well as a lot of stuff I wish I'd know about which is now long sold out...). So many good photographers are now selling their work directly either as POD books, limited run prints, through small off-the-grid publishers etc which is a movement I'm pleased to see continues to grow. But it's also hard to keep track of what's out there. I found it especially rewarding to scroll back through all the old posts on the blog. There is some quite wonderful work in there.

(Sonja Thomsen Surface)

So I'm going to be keeping an eye on Buffet and seeing what comes along.

BTW - I also like his idea of trading prints for books - you might possibly see that here...?

(Todd Deutsch Chasing the Family Drift)

James Nachtwey et al

(James Nachtwey)

Scrolling through the channels last night to try and find The Policewomen of Broward County (yes, I know...), I ran across a repeat of War Photographer, the excellent documentary about James Nachtwey. Although I've seen it before, I was immediately hooked and watched the whole 90 minutes or so again.

(James Nachtwey)

After the doc finished I pulled out my battered copy of Deeds of War from the shelf and took another look through it. And this morning I grabbed the doorstep sized Inferno from the local library. I had somehow forgotten how stunning Nachtwey's work is, along with how committed a character he is. Which got me thinking about a couple of things.

(Gilles Peress)

For me, during the late Twentieth and into the earlier Twenty-first Century there has always been a triumvirate of conflict/war photographers whose work spoke more loudly, more convincingly and was nearly always head and shoulders above anything else around. Don McCullin, Gilles Peress and James Nachtwey. Now, these guys are all getting on a little bit. I figure the last two are already into their early sixties and the Don is about 73 (not to suggest they are past it or not still photographing or anything). But who can forget McCullin's searing pictures from Vietnam or the Congo or Beirut arriving in time for Sunday breakfast with the colour supplements? Or Peress' unbearable yet absolutely essential images from Bosnia in Farewell to Bosnia and Rwanda in The Silence. And Nachtwey's b&w essays from Rwanda, the Sudan, Chechnya still, against all the digital and ad-dollar odds, being published in Time.

(Don McCullin)

But who are their heirs? Who is doing work of a similar calibre, work as powerful and searing as this and getting it published? I'm sure they are out there(or at least I hope they are).

Which leads me to: where the work of this sort and calibre from Iraq and Afghanistan (and any other current spot on the globe where human beings are suffering and dying)? There was a time when I would seek out such stories in the news magazines, the Sunday supplements as well as other often not quite so obvious places and publications - but they were never to hard to find and often looked you right in the eye from the newsstand. Perhaps I haven't been quite so diligent this last few years, but where is the work? I seem to have encountered so little in published form, and while the internet has been a boon to photography in so many ways, it seems in some ways to have belittled this kind of work, robbed it of its power and rendered it impotent.

(Don McCullin)

I have, it must be said, gone to the websites of some of the big (and not so big) newspapers and other publications when I have found a pointer that led me there. In one way it has been great that the NY Times or whatever can now publish the whole of an essay online when they perhaps only printed 2 or 3 pictures in the actual (physical) paper. And yet, somehow, scrolling through a slide show, along with added information or commentary just seems to lack impact or staying power - despite how good the images may be. And though many - indeed most - are very very good, where are the excellent ones? The pictures that sear themselves onto our retinas and haunt our dreams?

(Gilles Peress)

Postscript: Having written this, I just came across the story this last week of the photographs of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard in Afghanistan (and here and here)and words of censure coming from the supposedly open and outward looking administration in the White House. I think one essential thing McCuillin, Peress and Nachtwey all have in common is that their work was and is about pricking our complacency, about not letting us hide in our suburban middle-class ghetto's. Perhaps, in the end, they failed? Not because their work wasn't powerful enough or that they didn't try hard enough, but rather that our self-absorbed complacency was just too immense to overcome?

(James Nachtwey)

The Problem of Photography Pt.1 (The Gaze)

There is a lovely book of photographs by Stephen Shore called the Gardens at Giverny. It is very nicely done and has always been a favourite of mine. But I wonder at the conflicting emotions when the Metropolitan Museum of Art suggested photographing Monet's newly restored house and gardens at Giverny. Holy crap - what an incredible opportunity - to photograph Monet's Gardens. Holy crap - how on earth do you photograph Monet's Gardens.

The end result is a book that I feel reflects that. It is a beautiful collection of photographs giving us Shore's vision of the renascence of these iconic gardens, showing us their hidden and unnoticed details and late summer parched browns as well as their verdant lushness. A well executed collection of pictures by a major photographer. (I know of one landscape architect who keeps a copy on her desk. I also found, while looking for online pictures from it an interview with Stephen Shore where he notes that the contemporary photographer he is most interested in is Walid Raad which I find most encouraging in the light of what I say below).

And yet... and yet, place one or even all of these photographs beside one of Monet's paintings of his garden and they would be, I believe, immediately eclipsed (though I haven't actually stood, book in hand, before Water-Lilies or The Water-Lily Pond at the National Gallery). Certainly in many ways it's an unfair comparison, and I'm sure it was a comparison that Shore was both aware would be made and was probably constantly aware of in himself while he worked. But there is almost no other way it can be. Which brings me to what I see as the heart of the problem of photography - what I recently referred to as sustaining our gaze.

(Water-Lilies, Claud Monet)


It is one of the fundamental problems of photography that photographs rarely seem able to hold our attention for an extended period of time, never mind sustain our concentrated gaze. I find it hard to think of almost any photograph that is capable of holding a viewers gaze for even thirty minutes, never mind an hour or two or a whole afternoon. And yet I can think of numerous other works of art that can do just that.

When encountered, even a painting by a less than well known 18th Century artist - such as Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale) by John Ward can hold our direct attention for quite some time. And yet go to an exhibition of work by say Robert Adams or Eggleston or Lee Friedlander and how long would we spend, with our gaze fixed on an individual picture? Ten minutes? Twenty minutes, thirty? I think that would be approaching unusual even for the photographically literate, to say nothing of the serious but non specialist general viewer. Possible, but rare.

(Gordale Scar (A View of Gordale, in the Manor of East Malham in Craven, Yorkshire, the Property of Lord Ribblesdale) by John Ward)

And what of travelling to see a photograph? A single photograph mind you, not a whole exhibit of a photographer's work. I can think of a good number of works of art - mainly, though not only, paintings - that I would make the time and effort to travel some way to see - to another country even (and on occasion have done so). But to do the same for a single photograph? There are less than a handful of photographs that would have the same draw (a particular Atget - tiny as it would be; possibly a Walker Evans. Maybe even something like an early Fox Talbot). For a major exhibit of a particular photographer's work, certainly I would make the effort. But for individual photographs it is hard to think of many at all.

(Parc de Scaux, Atget)

Now none of these or the following thoughts are terribly new or original, but what has prompted me to start putting them together is a growing dissatisfaction with so much of the work I see that crosses my desk almost every day in one way or another. Yes, there is all sorts of work that excels at what it is trying to do. Work that adds another little twist or tweak to a certain direction or area of photography and does so well, whether it be large format urbanscapes, deadpan portraits, large format prints, directed and arranged tableaux etc. etc. And yet almost none of it even begins to push up against what I feel are the current, long standing limitations on photography (but not inherent limitations, because I don't believe they are).

(from Sticks and Stones - Lee Friedlander)

This is what has been called "the problem of photography", and the limitation of the gaze, the holding of our attention, is the clearest symptom of the problem. As I see it there are three main causes to the problem, three main limitations, three boundaries, that photography has yet to make serious - or at least successful - attempts to break out of (and which is where I feel that so much contemporary work is lacking. I encounter little which is even pushing up against these boundaries, never mind making an effort to break through them or smash them out of the way completely).

I want to take some time in future posts to explore these boundaries and the ways they limit or restrict photography, but for now the three boundaries as I see them are:

1. The lack of time in a photograph (which is tied in some way to the minimal influence of the artists hand in a photograph). Among others, John Berger, David Hockney and Richard Benson have tried to address this problem. A photograph contains so little time because everything is compressed into a fraction of a second (and even a "long" exposure practised by the likes of Atget out of necessity or others by choice makes very little difference to this - perhaps just a little, but not enough). As Hockney put it, the imbalance between the two experiences, the first and the second lookings, is too extreme.

2. The frame. The window that seems to continually apply its internally focused tension, never allowing the photographic image beyond those borders - be they square, rectangular or circular, 8x10 inches or 8x10 feet. The photographic frame has frequently been regarded as a window (and often positively so). Yet as a window, all we can ever do is look through it. Never step through it like a door (or even break through it) to what is beyond.

3. Perspectivism. Photography has for so long been limited (from long before the invention of film) by the concept of Renaissance Perspective, a theoretical straight-jacket that photography has usually been too insecure to try and throw off, never mind break from completely. It took painting 400 years. How long is it going to take photography?

(Let's Be Honest, the Weather Helped - Walid Raad - The Atlas Group Archive)



(btw, do respond with your thoughts, criticisms or comments. Posts are moderated, but only because I kept getting too many spam and junk posts)

Two for the Photo-Book Library - Benson and Eggleston

If you are an addicted photo-book collector, here are a couple of good sized tomes worth getting for the reference section:

First, The Printed Picture by Richard Benson. This is actually a quite beautiful book, most likely because Richard Benson cares to the Nth degree about the presentation and printing of pictures - especially photographs - in books. Benson, who teaches at Yale (and was Dean of the School of Art for a number of years), has also printed some of the most beautifully done photo-books out there such as the gorgeous four volume The Work of Atget as well as the incomparable Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company - probably the finest example of the combination of the photographer's and the printer's art . Among others, he has had a long standing partnership with Lee Friedlander, printing a number of Frieldander's books

The internet aside, I think it's true that we see the majority of the photographs we look at in the form of printed books or in magazines and this book is literally an overview of the printed picture going through the history of how pictures, mainly though not only photographic, have been reproduced, printed and presented. From woodblocks through to inkjets and digital technology with everything important in between. But the book is not overly wordy or academic and the pictures chosen as examples of the different techniques are frequently left to do a lot of the talking for themselves. Benson is both a photographer as well as a master of the printing press and it shows. The book is informative, intriguing and visually beautiful. And Benson is also able to describe these processes in a very straightforward yet complete manner. Definitely one for the bookcase and to thumb through again in the darkness of winter. (There was also a sort of precursor exhibition treading the ground of this book called The Physical Print: A Brief Survey of the Photographic Process, which was well reviewed on 5b4)

The second book is William Eggleston, Democratic Camera : photographs, and video, 1961-2008. This is the catalogue of the large Eggleston retrospective at the Whitney that ended earlier this year (I recently came across a very good review of the show here). It's a fairly heavy duty book and gives a pretty good overview of Eggleston's work along with a quiver full of essay's by Elizabeth Sussman, Thomas Weski, Stanley Booth et al. There's nothing earth shattering about the book or the essays, but if you haven't been able to gather together some of Eggleston's books such as Democratic Forest or Ancient & Modern or Los Alamos or Eggleston's Guide (grab the reprint while you still can...) - some of which are getting pricey these days - then it's a good way to view a fair chunk of his work.

One thing I did feel going through the book is how much better the majority of the photographs work in the context of their original book form rather than in a big retrospective book like this. I didn't get to see the exhibit, but have a feeling it wouldn't matter so much looking at a cross section of Eggleston's prints on the gallery wall - because many of them also stand on their own as well. But somehow, taken out of the overall context of say Eggleston's Guide or Democratic Forest and put together in one large compendium many of the pictures seemed at least a little diminished which makes me think of how important the grouping and sequencing of a set of photographs can be, where the whole is very much greater than the sum of the parts.

Either way, a good book for the shelf, although as I got this one out of the public library, I might be tempted by his new book on Paris instead (though I wasn't too keen on the Dunkerque book... it almost felt like he was a little lost in Basillico territory). Oh and if you come across a cheap copy of Election Eve, let me know!

Crosspostings - design, art and other stuff

I've been doing a lot of reading and looking at areas outside of photography recently - art (books and blogs and shows when I can), design - everything from clothes to industrial to goodness knows what. As well as things like fountain pens and paper products (in my last job as an archivists I was sort of known at the tech go-to-guy, so it tended to amuse people when I turned up at meetings with a Filofax and a fountain pen instead of a Blackberry...) - and I must say I do have a fondness for cool and funky looking office stuff, like cast aluminium pencil sharpeners from Denmark or industrial looking bookends from Japan or soft chrome magnetic paperweight planes that catch your paper clips as well....

So, just putting you all on notice that I'll be doing a bit of cross-posting on here every now and then when I come across something that takes my fancy.

For today, here's something from the UK designer Paul Smith. Rhodia notebooks from France are often to be found in the offices of architects, film directors and graphic designers (indeed, the paper is of a rather nice quality). Their mouse-pad/notepad is one of the most handy things I have on my desk.

Anyway, Paul Smith has taken the standard classic orange Rhodia cover and added his own twist to a limited edition run. I also thought them quite suitable for the photog crowd - although you would have to order them from the UK...

But to finish on a more sombre note - I don't quite get the whole US political dynasty thing, but here is what is imo one of the best Ted Kennedy photos - quite wonderful - by Dave Burnett (and, I'm guessing here, is probably a result of his Speed Graphic/Aero Ektar setup?)

(Photo - David Burnett)

Man-bags and stuff

I'm sure there are many readers of this blog who are also charter members of the camera bag a month club... I have what family refers to as my "camera bag mountain".

Well, I've actually been doing a lot of reading, writing and research lately (about the archive, photographs, Derrida, visual literacy and more) and I've been looking around for a nice hip (I need all the help I can get...) bag to transport around all the notes and books etc. Sure I could just use some clunky old messenger bag - but hey, a cool bag is a cool bag. And a re-purposed camera bag might do the trick if my old Domkes weren't so worn that the bottom has just about come out of them; my 26 year old canvas Billingham seems to have gone mouldy in the garage and the more recent bags were all for carrying around an 8x10.

I haven't found the holy grail of man-bags yet, though I did see one in a local store that sells everything from flowers to fountain pens to laser cut aluminium decorations to French pocket knives. Lovely black oiled leather bag, but it turned out to be by an "actual" Italian/French designer and cost nearly $600.00 - yeah, right.

(bag - Isaac Reina)

However, hunting around on the web I did come across these folk in Vancouver, BC - Palmer & Sons. Not the kind of bags I actually want right now (and probably not my price range either), but I just love that there's someone in Vancouver in this day and age making these kinds of beautiful hand-crafted pieces. Kudos to them for even making the effort! (On their blog, you can also see how they put some of them together).

Either way, my search for a cool murse continues...

How long is a photograph able to sustain our gaze - Exergue

(Thomas Nozkowski - Untitled)


I read two things in the last few days that both seem to come together and point to something I've been thinking about regarding the nature of photography:

About Painter Thomas Nozkowski in a Globe & Mail review (by Sarah Milroy - note: G&M articles are time limited) of his show at the National Gallery of Canada:

"....As well, he abandoned the anonymity of concept-driven art. “All of us are interested in having an un-alienated life,” he says. “What is the point of having a craft if you cannot use it to speak about the things that interest you outside the studio?” His art would be rooted in his own life experience."

and

"...So, I ask him, what can painting do that nothing else can?

“Oh, that's easy,” he says, his voice relaxing affectionately. “There is no other tool that can unite images and emotions so efficiently, that can bring together what you see and what you feel about it. Painting is really about pursuing what you desire. I mean, we all walk down the street, but we see completely different things. Here we are, sharing DNA and two million years of evolutionary history. Why is it that you are looking over there and I'm looking over here?”..."

(Jon Feinstein)


From Jon Feinstein talking about his work Pure Aesthetics:

"Pure Aesthetics rejects the tendency to find meaning and substance from superficial visual experience. Building on Clement Greenberg's ideas about abstract expressionism and the need for a tactile and purely visual perception of artwork, the images have little concept beyond their physical properties. Shiny, colorful, ostensibly inviting materials are laid flat and rendered into abstract patterns that at times appear to descend back into space or contain some code of visual complexity. While the "critical" viewer may demand a layered concept, there is actually nothing to explore beyond the purely physical surface."

Both of these sets of words raise issues about the nature and meaning of photography that I hope to explore over two or three posts to come.

(btw Clement Greenberg, when asked if he thought photography was an art or a craft, considered for a moment and then replied; "I thought it was a hobby?"... which isn't necessarily a bad thing)

Being a designer...

Sometimes - just occasionally - I wish I was a designer.

It's when I come across something like this:

Late one recent hot northern evening I was turning off the lights and saw this moth flitting around the house and I quickly became enthralled by it's patterns and colours.

The only camera I could lay my hands on was our little family Canon Cybershot. So it was direct flash and trying to figure out how the macro worked as I followed the moth around (it was still around next morning, but I only got a shot of its upper wings before it flew away into the garden).

But those patterns - the black and cream on it's upper wings and then the wonderful orange/red on it's under-wings. I just felt like I need to design a shirt or a dress or a book cover or fabric wall coverings or something - to take those patterns and colours and translate them into something else. Of course I'm not what you might call a designer, so I didn't... (you really don't want to see me draw or even try and design the dogs house).

But the pattern and colour still flits around in my mind.

BTW, it's a Tiger Moth.

a shimmer of possibility - Paul Graham

Last year I got rather bummed out when the pre-publication order I placed with a well known bookstore for the original edition of this book/collection never got filled. And when I looked around elsewhere it had already gone out of print.

Because it was such a popular book (for a photobook that is) Steidl decided to reprint it in a new, softcover, somewhat cheaper, all-in-one edition and, having come across my blog, were kind enough to send me a copy of the new edition. You may remember that the original was published as a set of twelve thin hardcover books together in one case - which, although I have never seen a set first hand - looked quite elegant and seemed a very suitable way to present the work.

Now, as I had only ever seen the original set in the catalogues, and hadn't read all the little technical detail, for some reason I had come to assume that this was a set of smallish books in a case. So imagine my surprise when this all-in-one version arrived in a rather large package which, when opened, presented something as large as the yellow pages for a metropolitan city and which was quite a bit heavier as it's 375 pages were made of nice, heavy, glossy paper.

It was only then that I looked back to the original version in the catalogue and realised that the individual books were about 9.5" x 12.5" in size. Aha... now it makes sense.

Anyway, this is a very physical book due to the size and heft, which makes it materially different from the original edition which, while still presenting the same size of page real estate, is made up of the the twelve individual books.

Physical appearance aside, the photographs are much as I had hoped. In one sense, this is pretty much postmodern street photography at its best (zenith?). And yet the blurb around the book also indicates that Graham was inspired by Chekov's short stories. In many ways I can see that their form is indeed inspired by Chekov's 201 short stories, but in terms of content it is very much Chekov by way of Don DeLillo.

There is a whole play and interplay not only between the "narrative" content of each individual story, but also between the stories themselves. I hesitate to use the term "narrative" because to me there is a certain implied forward motion in that word whereas these photographs (as with almost all photographs) not only look back, but their meanings also comes from complex interrelationships which move both backwards and forwards within the book form as well as between the books - and which is probably even more apparent in this one volume set. Their nature is in many ways very different from the textual story or narrative form. It is the sequencing, and the ability of the viewer to manipulate the sequencing, that gives these photographs much of their power and potential. And as the two different editions allow for different levels of manipulation by the viewer I would suggest that they allow for two different sets of meaning making. In essence, they aren't quite the same book.

If I hadn't seen the list of widely varied locations at the back of the book I might have titled these photographs "Walks With My Dog". Not in any negative sense, but in the sense that they really do illuminate the ordinary in a way which so many photographers attempt and yet fail at. Like DeLillo's stories they depend absolutely on an acute observation of the everyday. Yet like many of Chekov's short stories they take an ordinary event and find the one small spark of the other that so often permeates what we frequently fail to notice around us.

As Graham says:"I know it seems crazy, but I'm asking you to trust me and enjoy this quiet journey. Just slow down and look at this ordinary moment of life. See how beautiful it is, see how life flows around us, how everything shimmers with possibility."

My only wish would be that Steidl publish them/this in a smaller sized edition - a set of the 12 books but produced around the size of a regular - if thin - paperback. Perhaps a bit bigger then the Photo Poche series, or about the size of Moleskine's bigger notebooks. Big enough to still be able to read the pictures easily, but small enough to fit two or three of the individual books in a pocket or messenger bag pouch. I think that would probably be the best edition of what would then be three. Perfect jewels.

(All photos Paul Graham)

Richard Mosse - Saddam's Palaces (or my old Phillips 8x10 goes to Baghdad...)

(Al Faw Palace, Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq 2009)

A couple of years ago I sold my Phillips 8x10 Explorer camera to a young Irish photographer - Richard Mosse - while he was still at Yale.

Richard certainly seems someone to keep an eye on. He's already done some very interesting work to date and last week on BLDGBLOG I came across a new project of his called Breach - Saddam's Palaces (which I notice also made it to the front page of the Huffington Post as well - which can't hurt if you are working on name recognition...).

Anyway, I've actually got no idea until I hear from him if Ricard was actually using my old 8x10, although I'd like to think so - it's the perfect camera for a large format project like this.

(Al Faw Palace, Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq 2009)


And the project itself is one I really like. I think we've all seen a few pictures - especially from the earlier days of the occupation in Iraq - of US Soldiers in some of Saddam's sumptuous (although apparently not very well constructed) palaces. But this sustained view of them a few years on as the the military has have settled semi-permanently in to these opulent dwellings is quite fascinating.

(Al-Salam Palace, FOB Prosperity, Baghdad, Iraq 2009)

There's a sense of the "almost incongruous" about these pictures which in itself builds up to be a somewhat unsettling feeling. It no longer seems strange to see western troops bedded down and with their offices in these bizarre settings, and yet in many ways it should do (the palaces in and of themselves are somewhat bizarre - home furnishing kitsch and bad taste - though surprisingly, not always - taken the the n'th degree) - it no longer seems strange, but it should do.

(Birthday Palace Interior, showing dormitories built by American GIs inside Saddam's Palace architecture, Tikrit, Iraq 2009)

And I love the way they've been colonised by the troops with standard office partitioning for cubicles, plywood cabins for sleeping or work spaces, or portakabins and so on - like a family of cartoon mice taking over an abandoned house:

"BLDGBLOG: The way these structures have been colonized is often amusing and sometimes shocking—the telephones, desks, and instant dormitories that turn an imperial palace into what looks like a suburban office or hospital waiting room. Can you describe some of the spatial details of these soldiers' lives that most struck you?

Mosse:
It was extraordinary how some of the palace interiors had been transformed to accommodate the soldiers. Troops scurried beneath vaulted ceilings and glittering faux-crystal chandeliers. Lofty marble columns towered over rat runs between hastily constructed chipboard cubicles. Obama's face beamed out of televisions overlooking the freezers and microwaves of provisional canteen spaces."

(interior of Birthday Palace, Tikrit, Iraq 2009)

...from the very good interview with Richard on the BLDGBLOG site along with some good commentary. Anyway - wonderful stuff Richard and I certainly hope we will see this as a book soon.

"These extraordinary images—published here for the first time—show the imperial palaces of Saddam Hussein converted into temporary housing for the U.S military. Vast, self-indulgent halls of columned marble and extravagant chandeliers ,surrounded by pools, walls, moats, and, beyond that, empty desert, suddenly look more like college dormitories. Weight sets, flags, partition walls, sofas, basketball hoops, and even posters of bikini'd women have been imported to fill Saddam's spatial residuum. The effect is oddly decorative, as if someone has simply moved in for a long weekend, unpacking an assortment of mundane possessions.

The effect is like an ironic form of camouflage, making the perilously foreign seem all the more familiar and habitable—a kind of military twist on postmodern interior design.

Of course, then you notice, in the corner of the image, a stray pair of combat boots or an abandoned barbecue or a machine gun leaned up against a marble wall partially shattered by recent bomb damage—amidst the dust of collapsed ceilings and ruined tiles—and this architecture, and the people who now go to sleep there every night, suddenly takes on a whole new, tragic narrative."

(Al Faw Palace, Camp Victory, Iraq 2009)