Description
My most recent work has been exploring my own experiences as a combat medic/flight medic and my own relationship to traumatic injury, war, and death. I desire to show the hopeless futility of the never-ending cycle of human conflict and suffering. I want these images to hold up plain and visible the reality and nature of such things and to make the viewer consider whether or not they believe the cost of such actions to be an acceptable price. Though they are designed to make the viewer uncomfortable it is not out of any malicious desire on my behalf. I choose to show these uncomfortable images because they are an uncomfortable reality that is all too easily dismissed by western society. For many of us war is a problem for somewhere else to somebody else. Death in war in Western society is often romanticized, and depicted as heroic. Death is not heroic, nor romantic. Death is ugly, dirty, and plain. The dead lay twisted, and deformed, their mouths agape, pants soiled. They cry for their momma’s and writhe in agony before they die. I wish to show this to the viewer so that they may choose if the goal of war is worth the human cost. I believe that the least a society can do if they choose to participate in such acts is to have the courage to look upon the dead and acknowledge that it is their will for it to be done. Though I am not so naive as to imagine a world devoid of war; I do however, believe that if the effects of war were viewed by all there would be fewer wars.
