Through photography, Reza Aramesh explores the overwhelming deluge of media in the representation of conflict around the world. Working both with iconic war reportage images and photographs from contemporary conflicts in the Middle East, Aramesh begins to alter these images as if he was working with a scene in a storyboard. Background characters are brought into the foreground, prominent figures are scrubbed out. He then recreates and shoots these altered scenes, using non-professional actors, in the opulence of England’s stately homes.
In photography, Aramesh finds a medium with which to meld the socio-politics of the modern world with his interests in the history of art, film and literature. This photographic series, ‘Between the Eye and the Object Falls a Shadow’, draws inspirations from sources as diverse as 17th century Spanish artist Francisco Goya's ‘The Disasters of War’, (1810-1820) and the literary experiments of William S. Burroughs.
In his work, Aramesh seeks to turn our eye away from the blasting sound of the media – the shock that it intends to create – and towards the very human tragedy that lies buried in all that noise.