Voina Videnia
(2014)

In tandem with every modern conflict there occurs a parallel media conflict. Belligerents struggle for the symbolic support of onlookers just as much as they battle for the physical control of strategic locations and resources. In such a context, manipulated and propagandistic photographs circulate masquerading as objective fact, and nothing can be taken at face value.

Voina Videnia explores this media conflict in relationship to the ongoing unrest in eastern Ukraine. Apparently consisting of photographs appropriated from the Instagram account of a pro-Russian Ukrainian fighter, as the series progresses inconsistencies emerge which gradually reveal that the ‘photographs’ on the account are in fact depicting events in a popular video game.

In doing this Voina Videnia is intended to encourage reflection on the compromised nature of photography, and to more importantly to equip viewers with a tool kit of simple strategies designed to help them scrutinise such imagery with a greater knowledge of how photographs can be constructed or construed in order to deceive.