CHLOE SHARROCK

 Il hurlait encore

"Il hurlait encore" questions the almost mechanical repetitiveness of conflicts, as well as the public's consumption and assimilation of the imagery that results from them.

The result of a process of curation and reinterpretation of my own photographs taken previously in the context of journalistic work in conflict zones (Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, etc.), this project looks at the repetitive nature of the representation of so-called 'war' images.

Is violence not only systematic, but also systemic in its appearance?

These mass-produced images are repeated in the media and appear to be routinised. From one territory to the next, from one decade to the next, the same iconographic system seems to fall into place, until it becomes nothing more than an exponential, confused babble in which a martial symbolism hovers without any further meaning. The speed of broadcasting and its immateriality only amplify the emptiality of these images, which are all too easily assimilated by a public that has become deafened.

By copying, distorting and reproducing these photographs in a quasi-mechanical way, using reproducibility tools such as photoengraving and photocopying, new images are created. They then blur the boundary between each conflict represented, and this result of hybrid processes gives rise to a new common iconography. 

The degradation of the images as a result of repetitive processes gives way to parasitic distortions, an ultimate white noise added to the initial clamour. 

The work of materiality gives substance to the photographs, transforming them from press images, digital and immaterial, into perennial objects of reflection on reality and on their own din.

Until, of all these images, all that remains is a single long cry binding together these different visual artefacts of modern violence.