They Dropped Like Flakes, They Dropped Like Stars 2017

Description

The Dropped Like Flakes, They Dropped Like Stars, draws its title from Emily Dickinson’s poem The Battlefield, written in response to the American Civil War and first published in 1896.

Since 9/11, the United States has committed record numbers of American troops to wars in foreign countries, and Seawright’s work has examined the impact of those engagements on American society. He is known for photographic landscapes that explore the nature of conflict, most notably in his home city of Belfast. His work from the battlefields of Afghanistan engaged most directly with the battlefield but in recent years his focus has been on the American landscape, from sites of military recruiting offices to U.S. television news studios. His work depicts the American city as a contested space that gives form to the fraying edges of American life. They Dropped Like Flakes, They Dropped Like Stars imagines the American landscape as a battlefield where returning soldiers take their own lives in unprecedented numbers.

Seawright has been meeting and interviewing survivors of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The stories of their homecoming and of comrades lost to suicide have shaped this work.

Curated by John Carson