David Oresick

Soldiers in Their Youth (video)

July 7 - 31, 2011

David Oresick offers a raw, transparent, and seemingly authentic view of war from the perspective of those closest to it. Soldiers in Their Youth (2009) is a series of montages assembled from videos found on the Internet that were created by American soldiers and civilians reacting to the war in Iraq. The project is divided into two sections: part one, Soldiers in Their Youth, is made from footage of soldiers on the ground, and the second part, After the War (2009), examines the lives of veterans and their families after combat experience. By making editorial selections from hundreds of clips, then cutting, juxtaposing, and, perhaps most significantly, changing the context in which the images are viewed, Oresick has created works where new meanings are made. Blank white spaces interrupt the video to give the viewer time to reflect or to anticipate what will be seen next, and to illuminate the space within, making the viewer aware of his or her own presence even though the official position is to keep war remote.

David Oresick was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1984. He earned his BFA in photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York in 2007, and completed his MFA at Columbia College Chicago in 2010. He has exhibited at the Newspace Center for Photography, The Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University in Orange, California, and in the 2010 Fotofest Biennial, Houston. He is also the recipient of an Albert P. Weisman Project Grant. He lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.