AFTERWARds (NO WITNESS)
Inspired by the work of Hong Kong based artist Ma Yujiang who Photoshops military harware out of found war photographs, this project challenges the photojournalistic and archival representation of people who have been captured sensationalised by the reporting of war.
Applying emergent Ai image scrubbing and animation technologies, this process mines open source photographs of the War in Vietnam to remove and withhold the photographed bodies of war victims from becoming perpetually replicated, redistrubuted and recirculated beyond their own life time.
Syncretic spiritual practices across Vietnam treat photographs of dead people and ancestors as images for veneration and filial stewardship. Not for wide publication or hournalistic sensationalism.
These humanless landscapes speak of both loss and refusal; of the dissapearance and resilient that haunt post-war places. Here, the animated photographs of devastated landscapes offers an opportunity for reflection, veneration and stillness. These landscapes, now subjected to subdivisions, speculations, redevelopment and economic revitalisation still carry the spectres of home and the collective ecological shocks of war.
Source images:
Horst Fass, ‘Sun Breaks Through Dense Jungle,’ Binh Gia (Associated Press), 1965.
Art Greenspon, ‘First Sergeant of A Company, 101st Airborne Division,’ Hue (Associated Press),1968.
Horst Fass, ‘Women and Children Crouch in a Muddy Canal,’ Bao Trai (Associated Press), 1966.
Kyōichi Sawada, ‘Flee to Safety,’ Quy Nhon (World Press Photo), 1965.
Đặng Văn Phước, ‘Soldiers helping a Civilian From Her Village to a Refugee Camp,’ (Associated Press), 1968.
Bettman Archives, ‘United States Paratroopers,’ Bien Hoa (Getty images), 1965.
Huỳnh Công (Nick) Út, ‘Grandmother Carrying Her burned Grandson,’ Trang Bang (Associated Press), 1972.
Huỳnh Công (Nick) Út, ‘Napalm Girl,’ Trang Bang (Associated Press), 1972.
Malcolm Browne, ‘Thích Quảng Đức immolation,’ Saigon (Associted Press), 1963.
Eddie Adams, ‘South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, executes suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém,’ Saigon (Associated Press), 1968.
Hubert Van Es, ‘Helicopter Evacuation,’ Saigon, (Getty Images), 1975 (facilitated with the contribution of OpenArt Ai engines and its associated climate and socioeconomic impacts).