War Photographers

In a photo from Jennifer Karady’s exhibit, “Soldiers’ Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan,” Army Sgt. Pyle sits in rubble, bayonet in hand, ready to strike an unseen attacker. Right behind him, his wife and seven children enjoy a barbecue in the yard, oblivious to his life-or-death struggle just a few yards away. It’s a brutally powerful, disquieting image — and it’s real, at least psychologically. The piece is a staged photo based on Pyle’s experience in Iraq, in which he killed an attacker after being thrown into a truck by a mortar explosion, an event that continues to haunt him at home. Telling the stories of veterans from across the nation, Karady’s ambitious project is nearly surreal in its psychological depth; the imagery of the staged scenes, which each take nearly one month to prepare, are stunning. The exhibit runs concurrently with Christopher Sims’ “Theater of War: Pretend Villages of Iraq and Afghanistan,” which offers its own surreal images, along with the dizzying reality of the villages being staffed by recent immigrants from the very places they’re now pretending to live.

An opening reception starts at 5 p.m.
May 6-Aug. 7, 2010