MECHANICAL ANIMALS
Behind images, sometimes, hide everyday hells: we thus transform horror so that it can be represented in something worthy of observation. Photographs alone have the power to narrate reality, but we must not merely observe it, we must understand it to comprehend it.
Photography has the power to transform wounds into geometric shapes, scars into landscapes; to make even the rotten fascinating, even the devastated interesting.
With the right framing, destruction and decay become aesthetic.
Black and white can present danger as abstract, transfiguring it into representations distant from us. The beauty of the image can numb the gaze and normalize the unacceptable.
Often, however, these are illusions. Some places are not neutral: they are traps that consume, where progress, portrayed as safe and sustainable, does not exist.
Reality remains beneath and around destruction.
If we stop at superficial beauty, we fail to assimilate its truth. If we don't look beyond appearances, we accept the violence's continuation: while we admire forms and surfaces, the disaster unfolds. In silence.
The project is ongoing.
