7/28/2019 John Burk + Simon Norfolk Exhibition text

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GALLERY

BURKE

+

NORFOLKPHOTOGRAPHS FROM

THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

BY JOHN BURKE

AND SIMON NORFOLK

The rst ever photographs to be taken in Afghanistan were made by the Irish photographer John

Burke (1843?-1900). His eloquent images form an extraordinary record of the Second Anglo-Afghan

War (1878-1880), yet today he is virtually unknown.

Simon Norfolk (b. 1963) recognised in Burkes photographs a humane and critical eye for the British

colonial project and in 2010 travelled to Afghanistan in order to follow in his footsteps. In what he

terms a collaboration with his Victorian forerunner, Norfolk engaged in a kind of re-photography.

Burkes diverse photographic output included landscapes, battleelds, archaeological sites, street

scenes, portraits of British ofcers and ethnological group portraits of Afghans. Rather than articially

restaging these compositions exactly, Norfolk identied contemporary equivalents, researching and

travelling to Burkes vantage points and developing a digital version of his wet plate technique.

As the singular War in the exhibition title implies, Norfolks project is in part an indictment of the

unrelenting impact of conict and imperialism on the landscape and people of Afghanistan over the

past 130 years. The echoing images that result from his partnership with Burke highlight points of

continuity and change from either side of the twentieth-century in the war-ravaged country.

Simon Norfolk was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1963. In 1994 he turned from photojournalism to

landscape photography, publishing For Most of It I Have No Words 1998, a book about places that

have witnessed genocide. In Afghanistan: chronotopia 2001, he examined the layers of physical

evidence left by thirty years of conict in the country.

To accompany the show a new book named Burke + Norfolk: Photographs From The War in

Afghanistan published by Dewi Lewis Publishing 40.00, quarterbound large-format hardback 168

pages, 100 colour & duotone plates 290mm x 365mm ISBN: 978-1-907893-11-7

Watch the lm on You Tube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXrmBhpRG2U