In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last few weeks of the show, we are going to increase the frequency (and the excitement) and share 2 per week - it’s a veritable photo frenzy!

Don’t miss it. The show’s last day is July 2nd! (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)

This week’s image is from Ben Lowy. Ben’s work has been generating a lot of buzz here. The suite of 4 images are an interesting and different look at the war in Iraq.

ABOUT : Benjamin Lowy (New York, NY) captures everyday scenes in Iraq as seen through the lens of his camera and the inches-thick, bulletproof window of an American Army Humvee. A self-represented assignment photographer with stock syndicated through the VII Network and clients ranging from The New York Times Magazine to Newsweek, Lowy was named one of PDN’s 30 emerging photographers to watch in 2004 and participated in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. Granted the Eddie Adams/Carl Mydans Award for War Photography, Lowy’s work has received awards from American Photography, Communication Arts, World Press Photo, and Pictures of the Year International, among others.

From Lowy’s statement:

I began this project as a response to what I felt was the general inability of people back home to comprehend what Iraq is like. Most people have never really seen or felt the effects of war. Confronted by a level of violence so high that walking on the streets to photograph is tantamount to suicidal behavior, I found myself confined to working with American soldiers, spending most of my time going on various missions while looking at the landscape of this broken country. My only view was through the inches-thick bulletproof window of an Army Humvee.

Metaphorically speaking, these windows represent a barrier that impedes dialogue. These pictures show a fragment of Iraqi life taken by a transient passenger in a Humvee. The images are not intimate - they often show a distant and detached perspective of a country so empty, so desolate and of a situation so dire.

ABOVE IMAGE:

Benjamin Lowy, A U.S. Army tank patrols in front of an often bombed Iraqi police station in Abu Ghraib as seen from a passing army Humvee patrol on July 11, 2007, 2007, from the series “Iraq: Perspectives,” Archival Inkjet Print, 11 ¾ x 16 ½ inches, courtesy of the artist and VII Network

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 11:02 am and is filed under Image a Week, PRC Exhibitions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.