Output details

Aesthetic Distance

This work builds on and expands an area of enquiry marginally addressed in the Wellcome Collection exhibition, War and Medicine. The research explores the failure of traditional forms of documentary representation to offer an empathetic understanding of conflict. Supported through an RSA International Fellowship award and informed by a second commissioned research trip to Afghanistan, two video works were produced. These works manipulated time and focus to enforce a new reading of observational documentation of events. These were accompanied by three photographic series produced to emphasis the unreality of reportage photographs depicting exoticised or extreme circumstances.

A commission from the Department of Health to research the continuation of the care-pathway for military patients in NHS hospitals and MoD Rehabilitation Centres extended the scope of the enquiry and enabled the development of photo-essays for BBC and NHS Choices websites. Keynote lectures were delivered in the Arts and Ecology Lecture series (RSA), the Association of Medical Humanities Conference (Tate St Ives), and the ACE/RUDI Conference, Fairytale or Horror Story. Further presentations were made at the Royal College of Surgeons Triennial Conference (Glasgow), ISEA (Istanbul), the New Silk Roads conference (Bangkok), and Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (Selly Oak Hospital). Elements of the photographic record collected through the initial research, which documented the journey from point of injury to rehabilitation facility, have established a methodology which is included in standard pre-deployment training materials for military and medical staff.

Works from the exhibition were subsequently shown at Wolverhampton Art Gallery (Afghanistan), Istanbul Biennial/ISEA (Broken Stillness), Imperial War Museum North (Saving Lives – Frontline Medicine), Gasser Grunert Gallery, New York (Engines of War), and included in the Lowave curated DVD series: Human Frames. The body of work was discussed in the book, War Culture and the Contest of Images: New Directions in International Studies.