paul seawright

August 4, 2005 - August 27, 2005

Commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to document the war in Afghanistan, Seawright traveled to the war torn region in 2002 and the resulting body of work is a sweeping, spare, understated and quite response to the terrain of the destroyed and heavily mined desert landscapes. Avoiding the trappings of an exoticizing vision, he seeks to draw upon, extend, and rework the distinctive aesthetic and conventions he established through earlier photographs of contested, politically contaminated landscapes in his home city of Belfast and more recently on the fringes of various European cities. Of the Afghanistan work, he writes that he is less concerned with the visible scars of war, but instead with the hidden malevolence of his landscape. This is his third Blue Sky Gallery exhibit and his large-scale color images mirror those included in his recently published book on Afghanistan, “Hidden.”