• 0

We Are Not The Dead

Written by Louisa Döderlein on . Posted in Footprints

Photographer Lalage Snow, who is currently based in Kabul/ Afghanistan, embarked on an 8-month-long project titled “We Are The Not Dead” featuring portraits of British soldiers before, during, and after their deployment in Afghanistan. Snow captures the innocent expressions of these men transformed into gaunt, sullen faces in less than a year.

The three-panel juxtaposition allows the viewer to observe the physical changes a stationed soldier in a war zone goes through. Time is sped up for these men under the beating sun, amidst combat.

Regardless of age, the boys that went in came back as men with experiences beyond their years. As weathered and worn as their skin or sunken in faces may appear, it’s their dilated eyes that are the most telling.
Additionally, Snow’s series accompanies each triptych with quotes from each of the servicemen that gives a great deal of insight into their mental and emotional state at each given time.

Snow’s intention with the series is to not only honor their bravery by featuring them, but to also draw attention to every soldiers’ psychological transformation. She says, “It was a very personal project and stemmed from having embedded with the military on and off for 4 years in Iraq and Afghanistan and bearing witness to how many young men return as shadows of their former selves and, in many cases, with deep, psychological scars. As the body count of British servicemen killed or wounded rose and the political ramifications of the British army’s presence in Afghanistan became increasingly convoluted, more and more soldiers felt like they didn’t have a voice, or at least, weren’t being listened to. We Are The Not Dead is an attempt at giving the brave young men and women the chance to explain how it really is.”

After two and a half years being based in Kabul, Lalage Snow made a documentary, Afghan Army Girls, which will premiere later this year.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Trackback from your site.

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Sense of Time

Sense of Time is the first interactive module of the Cultural Internet Platform InEnArt.

Contact us

  • InEnArt
    Molla Çelebi Çesme Çikmazi 1/3
    34427 Istanbul/Turkey
  • + 90 - 212 - 292 41 34