photography by
Simon Norfolk

plus an audio interview with the
photographer by Jim Casper

Simon Norfolk is a very talented driven young photographer who is pursuing one of life’s big questions with intensity and focused intention. He is studying war, and its effects on many things: the physical shape of our cities and natural environments, social memory, the psychology of societies, and more.

He is examining genocide; imperialism; the interconnectedness of war, land and military space; and how wars are being fought at the same time with supercomputers, satellites, outdated weapons and equipment, people on the ground, intercepted communications, and manipulated and manipulating media.

Norfolk is doing this with photography that is beautiful — stunning in its clarity and detail, without the typical shock or trauma that one might expect about the subject of war. All of his work is informed by inquisitive intelligence, research, supporting facts and figures. And over time, deliberately and carefully, he is trying to connect many of the dots.

He attacks his subjects with a forensic approach, and thinks of his photographs of landscapes as “chronotopes”, layers of meaning, abandoned redundant military hardware, bombed-out ruins, mass graves, forgotten memory — all dating back to before the Roman empire and continuing through to the future, non-stop.

His personal manner and his supporting texts are as quiet as his photographs, but he has an edge about him that rivets listeners and readers. He makes bold sweeping statements that link together “designs and patterns, historical traces [of war] in landscape, architecture, language” all over the world. He speaks from direct experience: Rwanda, Afghanastan, Iraq, Bosnia, abandoned battlefields scattered with broken tanks, unexploded cluster bombs, depleted uranium bullets, mass graves, ruined houses, towns, villages, lives.

In this constant layering and covering up, and what remains, he believes it is his duty as an investigative photographer to make us stop and regard a seemingly benign scene with more discrimination. His job is to “lift it out of the flow,” freeze it, and make us think.

His books, which he refers to as “chapters” in the same ongoing story-telling, are perhaps the most satisfying way to comprehend the complex things he is trying to communicate. His website is state-of-the-art and packed with informed reporting and packaged in a compelling manner. If you get a chance to hear him speak, do so. And when you see his very large prints on the walls of galleries or museums, they will mean so much more to you.

We met for the first time in the summer of 2006 immediately after he delivered the keynote lecture at the Rhubarb-Rhubarb photography festival in Birmingham UK. We sat for more than an hour talking about his work and ideas. Here, you can listen to several choice bits of that conversation:

audio segment 1: The challenge of depicting "battlefields" in all of their various meanings from ancient covered-up scenes of battles, to recent still-smoking destruction, to the hyper-clean rooms where supercomputers design strategies of 21st century warfare. "I don't know what the final form [my work will take...a big book, an exhibition, a movie, a website], but I know a gallery is not a book on a wall." (4 minutes)

audio segment 2: Norfolk's first encounter with the mass graves of Rwanda. "... horrible, horrible, horrible..." (2 minutes 40 seconds)

audio segment 3: On the ideas of forensic traces, chronotopology, and how our environments are often shaped by the remains of redundant military hardware. (2 minutes)

audio segment 4: On cluster bombs, depleted uranium bullets, and coping with the aftermath. (4 minutes 30 seconds)

audio segment 5: An ironic anecdote of life as a war photographer "They were only interested in us because they thought we were going to die that day!" (1 minute 40 seconds)

— Jim Casper

Visit Simon Norfolk's great web site.