What's Left Afterwar
Saturday marked the grand opening of Project 4, a new art gallery on U Street. The site promises to showcase a wide variety of media and artist’s visions by opening the venue to guest curators, rather than following the lead of a single gallerist.
Like most D.C. galleries, the space is quite small, but Project 4 has worked smartly with what they have. The gallery has two levels in a loft-like presentation, so that the upper level only occupies the back two-thirds of the site. This allows the wall space in the front third to extend up both stories, so large pieces can be hung, and gives viewers on the second floor a patio view of the lower level (which could come in handy for the alternative types of work Project 4 plans on bringing in, like musical events). My only advice – get there early if you attend an opening, or risk getting your toes smashed and wine spilled on your expensive camera.
Lori Grinker’s exhibit, Afterwar: Veterans From A World in Conflict, seemed like a somber choice for the kick-off show, but her photographs were powerful enough to hold the attention of the massive crowd that descended upon the opening reception. Grinker, an internationally renowned photographer, takes this collection from 15 years of travel to nations in conflict – Israel, El Salvador, Russia, and so on. Her photos seek out the leftovers, what she can find in a person’s eyes after the guns stop firing.
Though Grinker used different settings and photographed nearly every type of combatant and person touched by war, each subject is doing the same thing: absolutely nothing. They are sitting in chairs, gazing at yellowed photographs and letters, standing in the middle of empty roads, or floating idly in pools. Even the boy in a wheelchair on a basketball court has his head bent down so far he seems to be trying to disappear from the game. No one is working or producing anything, no one is going anywhere, and more strikingly, no one is conveying a single emotion.
Each portrait captures eyes that have drifted past the pride and anger and anguish to ring hollow. The photos are most powerful in capturing this vacant state. Grinker claims she has no particular political message. Instead, she wanted to focus on individuals stuck in the aftermath of conflict. She may not have wanted to take sides, but the exhibit’s message is both strong and undeniably fundamental: War Ruins. No matter if the cause was just or not, war ruins more than simply buildings and governmental regimes, it destroys people, including --especially -- those who survive it.
Grinker included excerpts from interviews with her subjects below each photograph. There are the victims we expect, and their accounts are brutal, but unsurprising. The impact is in the disfigured man who speaks of pride in his service, but cannot hide from the camera the empty expression and still hands. As if the war had consumed his existence and he can no longer find a direction to turn, a reason to continue moving. None of them can.
Project 4 is located at 903 U Street and is open on Saturdays from 1-8 p.m., or by appointment. Lori Grinker’s exhibit will run until April 1.