Over the past few years my practice has been focused on and informed by images from warzones throughout the world. As an American civilian, I have come of age with an awareness of my tacit participation in warfare that I never witness first hand. Rather than as an event, war operates on the periphery, a vague affect diffused into the everyday. I wish to implicate myself as a participant as well as a spectator, an artist engaged in violence.
The following paper is broken into to main sections. The first examines the experience of viewing the images of the dead on the battlefield, and the relationship between the viewer and the image referent that develops from that encounter. The second half examines a selection of my own artworks. A close examination of these works serves as a way to expand and reexamine the concepts contained in the first half. In conclusion I summarize my practice as an effort in “turning towards” the war victim.