Bradford Impressions Gallery exhibition gives different view of Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Bradford Impressions Gallery exhibition gives different view of Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts

9:36am Thursday 2nd September 2010 in

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Postcards of the Yorkshire Dales, gift boxes, graffiti created by US soldiers and diary entries from the mother of a Royal Marine feature in an exhibition taking a different perspective of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bringing the War Home, at Bradford’s Impressions Gallery this autumn, rejects the traditional view that war photography depicts dramatic moments of combat captured by heroic male photojournalists.

Instead it offers new approaches by women, non-combatants and Iraqis and Afghans.

The exhibition includes censored correspondence sent to former Guantanamo detainee and UK resident Omar Deghayes, which includes Yorkshire Dales postcards.

Also depicted is the world of fake Iraqi and Afghan villages built by the US military in America to serve as training grounds for soldiers.

American artist Peter van Agtmael records darkly comic graffiti made by and for US soldiers in the toilets of an army airstrip in Kuwait.

Kay May combines photographs of a family home and personal diary entries with Foreign Office communiqués and amateur digital images sent by her son in Afghanistan, to convey her experience as a mother of a Royal Marine, and Asef Ali Mohammad, an Afghani, has photographs and interviews various Kabul residents, offering complex responses to American occupation.

Themes raised in the exhibition will be explored by a panel discussion. The panel will include exhibition curator Pippa Oldfield, artist Lisa Barnard and Hilary Roberts, senior curator of photographs at the Imperial War Museum.

The discussion will be followed by a viewing of the exhibition. Bringing the War Home is at the Impressions Gallery, Centenary Square, Bradford, until November 14.

• For more information ring (01274) 737843 or e-mail enquiries@impressions-gallery.com