Research; Simon Norfolk

In relation to the term 'Environment', all three of these images are from Simon's work; 'Afghanistan - Chronotopia', which reveal the chaos that was here and the destruction and remains of this land.

This image, I think represents the once chaotic landscape that is now at peace. The textures and tones within this landscape all have different meanings and representations. I think they also give an edgy character to the photograph. For instance the broken, destroyed planes show the hard, assassinating history, whereas the calm, clearing, warm sky perhaps represents peace and that the worst has passed or is passing.

 This photograph is of an old outdoor cinema - A place, once probably full of enjoyment, laughter and happiness. I think the warmth of this image represents this. - Also with the pinky tones of the sky. The sky in the background looks really beautiful.
The cinema doesn't look as if it has decayed over time. I think without even knowing the title of this image, the viewer would come to the conclusion of a non-natural erosion process.
By photographing the destruction of a cinema and by the screen being the central focus point of the image, it may portray what the people of Afghanistan had to see and watch.

I personally really like this image, due to the different colours of the sky. I think the sky is the first thing the viewer looks at before anything else.

The bottom of the photo is quite dark, showing an old bus station. It looks worn and run down which may be why it is so dark. - To represent the lack of life and use of it now.

I think the colours of the sky tell the story. By showing black and grey clouds with the sunshine just coming through the other side, I think may express that bad, or grey times may form but sunshine will come out in the end. Perhaps linking to the old sayings of 'the light at the end of the tunnel', 'calm before the storm', 'things get worse before they get better' etc.

As photographer Simon Norfolk claims in the following interview, his work documents an international "military sublime." His photos reveal half-collapsed buildings, destroyed cinemas, and unpopulated urban ruins in diagonal shafts of morning sunlight...

BLDGBLOG: Could you start with a brief thematic introduction to your work?

Simon Norfolk: All of the work that I’ve been doing over the last five years is about warfare and the way war makes the world we live in. War shapes and designs our society. The landscapes that I look at are created by warfare and conflict.... So I started off in Afghanistan photographing literal battlefields – but I'm trying to stretch that idea of what a battlefield is. Because all the interesting money now – the new money, the exciting stuff – is about entirely new realms of warfare: inside cyberspace, inside parts of the electromagnetic spectrum: eavesdropping, intelligence, satellite warfare, imaging. This is where all the exciting stuff is going to happen in twenty years' time. So I wanted to stretch that idea of what a battleground could be. What is a landscape – a surface, an environment, a space – created by warfare?

BLDGBLOG: Your photos are usually unpopulated. Is that a conscious artistic choice, or do you just happen to be photographing these places when there's no one around?

Norfolk: Well, part of this interest of mine in the sublime means that a lot of the artistic ideas that I'm drawing on partly come out of the photography of ruins. When I was in Afghanistan photographing these places – photographing these ruins – I started looking at some of the very earliest photojournalists, and they were ruin photographers: Matthew Brady's pictures of battlefields at Gettysburg, or Roger Fenton's pictures from the Crimea. And there are no dead bodies. Well, there are dead bodies, but that’s very controversial – the corpses were arranged, etc.

BLDGBLOG: Ironically, though, your photos haven't really been accepted by the art world yet – because of your subject matter.

Norfolk: Well, I cannot fucking believe that I go into an art gallery and people want to piss their lives away not talking about what’s going on in the world. Have they not switched on their TV and seen what's going on out there? They have nothing to say about that? They'd rather look at pictures of their girlfriend's bottom, or at their top ten favorite arseholes? Switch on the telly and see what's going on in our world – particularly these last five years. If you've got nothing to say about that, then I wonder what the fucking hell you're doing.


The idea of producing work which is only of interest to a couple of thousand people who have got art history degrees... The point of the world is to change it, and you can't change it if you're just talking about Roland Barthes or structuralist-semiotic gobbledygook that only a few thousand people can understand, let alone argue about.


That's not why I take these photographs.

Full Interview: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/warphotography-interview-with-simon.html