Backdrops
2011, 9 mins 46 secs, digital transfer from 16mm film
Filmed on the frontline in Helmand against backdrops depicting photographic or painted artworks from previous conflicts, ‘Backdrops’ dislocates elements of real life from the Province which are commonly presented to us by the media.
Through a series of vignettes, life in the war zone is relocated to previous eras, and itself becomes part of a cycle of wars and their depictions.
This contectualisation not only works to make us re-examine the works of Nash, Piper and Burke, and to relate these to war now, but also makes us re-examine our numbered response to the over-saturation of mediated images of Helmand.
Mark Neville is based in London, UK and Kyiv, Ukraine.
British artist Mark Neville works at the intersection of art and documentary, investigating the social function of photography. His latest book, Parade, a multilayered portrait of the farming community in Brittany, France, was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2020. Neville is currently working on a new book project about Ukraine which will be published later this year by Steidl. Stop Tanks With Books will employ his activist strategy of a targeted book dissemination, and try to make a direct impact upon the war in Ukraine.