Dried blood sinks into the pores of the disengaged subject, Liz. Her glassy stare is disarming, leaving more questions than answers.
Photographer James Day wants us to question our relationship with violence. In his new book and exhibition, entitled Barbarian, Day asks what it is about this gruesome portrait that really makes us uncomfortable.
Is it the presence of blood, he asks, or rather the absence of any response?
The image is the first in a series of 23 large-scale portraits that addresses a desensitisation to violence which Day believes is largely thanks to the media. "This was the very first shot that I took" says Day. "And it is one of my favourites."
"Every minute millions of photographs are now taken, uploaded, and circulated. Around 20 million are viewed in one minute" says Emma Lewis, assistant curator at the Tate Modern. "They are consumed and immediately discarded." It is this devouring of violent media that Day hopes to criticise in his photo series.
"The portraits have a still, deadpan look that bears a resemblance to police mugshots or colonial-era ethnographic studies" Lewis says. "It references a mode of new contemporary portraiture in which emotion is wrung dry until what’s left is just cold, hard, fact."
The exhibition opens on October 18 at Protein Studios, London
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
