Remnants of War

Remnants of War

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The Remnants of War work focuses on loss, anger, violence, and humanity. To create this work, I go into the darkroom with hundreds of negatives that depict hands and scatter them across the surface of the paper. I then expose the paper to light. I take off the negatives and proceed to dip my hands or feet into the developer to place them on the paper. This develops the paper where I have touched its surface, leaving an image of my hands or feet behind. The images of hands reference the mark making of children and prehistoric hand imagery found in cave paintings. The chemical manipulations create colors that resemble smoke, fire, and bruising on the body.

The Remnants Of War series has two stages. The first stage of my emotions expressed on the paper contain a rage shown by the splattering of developer on the photographic paper which is conveying the initial violence of a scene where one sees the blood stains left behind from a violent act. The second stage of the work came about after my initial anger grew to a heavy lingering weight about the cycles of violence that never seem to cease, a stillness that comes with prolonged saturation of brutality that leaves one numb.