Simon Norfolk
For most of it I have no words, 1998
17.5 x 17.5 cms
6 14/16 x 6 14/16 ins
9429
Provenance
Jagged Art, London, acquired in January 2003
Signed and numbered 2/10 on the label. Simon Norfolk established his reputation with an important body of work entitled For Most of It I have no Words. This moving response...
Signed and numbered 2/10 on the label.
Simon Norfolk established his reputation with an important body of work entitled For Most of It I have no Words. This moving response to war and inhumanity remains one of the most profound and moving bodies of work by any British artist of his generation.
The project was the subject of a book and an exhibition. The accompanying text explains:
Simon Norfolk established his reputation with an important body of work entitled For Most of It I have no Words. This moving response to war and inhumanity remains one of the most profound and moving bodies of work by any British artist of his generation.
The project was the subject of a book and an exhibition. The accompanying text explains:
A landscape photographer, Simon Norfolk's work questions the concept of 'battlefield' in all its forms. He has documented some of the world's worst war-zones and refugee crises, and photographed supercomputers used to design military systems or test nuclear missile launches.
Norfolk's extraordinary body of work For Most Of It I Have No Words(1999) investigates the landscapes of genocide. It begins in Rwanda (1994) where partially clad skeletons and violated refuges still bear witness to individual lives and deaths.
The images travel back through time, drawing a thread through an array of twentieth century events: Cambodia's Year Zero in 1975; the free bombing zones developed from 1962 in Vietnam; the use of the defoliant Agent Orange; extermination camps in Auschwitz; the bombing of Dresden; the mass graves of the Ukraine; and the fields of Anatolia where Armenians were marched to their deaths.
The series concludes in the Omaheke Desert, where the sands of the Namibian desert have erased the final traces of Herero nomadic people, killed under German colonial rule in 1904.
For Most Of It I Have No Words documents the act of forgetting as the physical reminders of genocide disappear from the landscape, and away from our consciousness.
Simon Norfolk established his reputation with an important body of work entitled For Most of It I have no Words. This moving response to war and inhumanity remains one of the most profound and moving bodies of work by any British artist of his generation.
The project was the subject of a book and an exhibition. The accompanying text explains:
Simon Norfolk established his reputation with an important body of work entitled For Most of It I have no Words. This moving response to war and inhumanity remains one of the most profound and moving bodies of work by any British artist of his generation.
The project was the subject of a book and an exhibition. The accompanying text explains:
A landscape photographer, Simon Norfolk's work questions the concept of 'battlefield' in all its forms. He has documented some of the world's worst war-zones and refugee crises, and photographed supercomputers used to design military systems or test nuclear missile launches.
Norfolk's extraordinary body of work For Most Of It I Have No Words(1999) investigates the landscapes of genocide. It begins in Rwanda (1994) where partially clad skeletons and violated refuges still bear witness to individual lives and deaths.
The images travel back through time, drawing a thread through an array of twentieth century events: Cambodia's Year Zero in 1975; the free bombing zones developed from 1962 in Vietnam; the use of the defoliant Agent Orange; extermination camps in Auschwitz; the bombing of Dresden; the mass graves of the Ukraine; and the fields of Anatolia where Armenians were marched to their deaths.
The series concludes in the Omaheke Desert, where the sands of the Namibian desert have erased the final traces of Herero nomadic people, killed under German colonial rule in 1904.
For Most Of It I Have No Words documents the act of forgetting as the physical reminders of genocide disappear from the landscape, and away from our consciousness.