In light of Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, I thought it might be interesting to look at a recent example of an artist dealing with images of war. Harrell Fletcher's American War is an exhibition that presents the contents of a museum in Ho Chi Minh City, re-photographed and presented in various galleries around the USA. In America, no such museums exist, and certainly none curated with such a direct focus on atrocity and violence. Even the solemn list of names in Maya Lin's Vietnam War Veteran's Memorial is more some can take. As for Harrell's intervention, I can't claim that it takes a critical stance on the images, but rather puts them through a series of framing devices (his camera, the gallery) to affect their meaning. You can see a selection of the work and read his statement on the website.
1 comment:
I went to this museum (ex 'The Museum of American Crimes') about five years ago, and rather than one single image, as Sontag might have it, my memory is imprinted with the words 'Agent Orange'. I remember that it was quite a shock to come here after touring the country's other memorial sites, which on the whole tend to make a theme park out of trauma - for example, crawling through the Cu Chi tunnels as a main course is then joined by the desert of firing off enormous rifles (men) and buying an XS 'I love Cu Chi' t-shirt (women).
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