Phil Nesmith - My Baghdad: Photographs

Someone whose opinion I respect very much called me the other day to chat about things and then he told me that had attended the opening at Irvine Contemporary in DC for Phil Nesmith - My Baghdad: Photographs.

"Lenny," he said, "this is an amazing show, you gotta write something about it!"

The exhibition is a series of photographs shot in Baghdad and produced on glass plates using a dry plate ambrotype process. A set of editioned C-print enlargements from the glass plates accompanies the unique images in the exhibition, which goes through Feb. 17, 2008.

Phil Nesmith, MH47, 2007. Dryplate ambrotype
(sandarac varnished silver emulsion on black glass). 8 X 12 inches

This is what the photographer wrote about the works:

In 2003, soon after the fall of Baghdad, I began a year long stint in Iraq. The novelty of the experience wore off soon after arrival, and my days in Baghdad seemed to repeat themselves, like a film looped to play continuously, returning to the start the moment after it ends. The repetition created routine, the routine normalizing what would otherwise be extraordinary.

This normative process was one that I was both aware of and oblivious to, and was one that I realized was itself a repetition of what my father had gone through as a soldier in Vietnam. I started to become conscious that the daily existence of the soldiers around me, while surrounded by different, new technologies and capabilities, still maintained a surprising similarity to the life of soldiers on the battlefield in Vietnam or anywhere, going back centuries. The routine of life in a war zone this week would be recognized by soldiers from World War II, from the Spanish American War, or from the American Civil War.

Since returning from Iraq I have sought to find a way to evoke this sense of historical telescoping and the echoes of social memory in my work. I became interested in early photographic processes, and saw within them a way of creating a visceral connection between the contemporary and the historic, utilizing an old process to capture a new conflict. These images also blur the boundaries of photographic processes as well by mixing the cutting edge digital technology used to capture the image and a combination of nineteenth century techniques to bring the image to life.

Having served in several war zones during my time in the US Navy, I know what he means. And seeing that helicopter brought back memories of a helicopter crash at sea on a flight from Beirut to Larnaca, Cyprus that is a story for another day and reminded me what a lucky man I am.

See the photographs here