Table of Contents
Introduction: Motivation and Inspirations........................................................................................3
Artistic Assumptions: Archetypes and Pattern.................................................................................4
The Implication of Epigenetics.........................................................................................................4
War against War: Art as Aversion Therapy?.....................................................................................6
Defining Terrorism: the Problem of Propaganda..............................................................................7
Privacy and The Society of Fear: the case of Steve Kurtz...............................................................8
Catharsis and Kathe Kollwitz...........................................................................................................9
Concepts and Complicity: Geers and Kentridge ...........................................................................10
Protest and Performance: Abas Amini and Ulay............................................................................11

Litmus Body: Gottfried Helnwein's beautiful gore........................................................................12

The Problem of Lived Experience: Goya in the age of CNN.........................................................13
Surviving the Game: Tsuyoshi Ozawa's Vegetable Weapons.........................................................14
What we Eat: Media Saturation, Epistemology Corrosion and Bacon...........................................15
Trauma: Light and Form in Alfredo Jaar's Rwandan Project.........................................................16
Photo-Journalism as Art: James Nachtwey.....................................................................................17
Violence and Gender: Sontag, Woolf and Sally Mann...................................................................18
Information Interventions: The Bureau of Inverse Technology.....................................................19
Sugar Approximating Guns: Susan Graham...................................................................................20
Catastrophic Wounds: Nakbah and the photos of Nina Berman....................................................21
Child Mor(t)ality : Henry Darger ..................................................................................................22
Peripheral Portraiture: Chen Chien-Jen..........................................................................................23
Treatment / Torture.........................................................................................................................24
Conclusion(s)..................................................................................................................................25

Illustration Index

Illustration 1: Ernst Friedrich. War Against War. 1924. ............................................................................5
Illustration 2: I Want Out from the Committee to Help Unsell the War. 1971...........................................6
Illustration 3: Kathe Kollwitz. Woman and Death. 1910...........................................................................7
Illustration 4: Kendell Geers, blow. 1993..................................................................................................8
Illustration 5: Abas Amini. 2003................................................................................................................9

Illustration 6: Gottfried Helnwein, The Disasters of War 3, 2007. 200 cm x 293 cm. mixed media (oil
and acrylic on canvas). In memory of Goya............................................................................................10

Illustration 7: Francisco de Goya. The Third of May. 1814 ....................................................................11
Illustration 8: Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Vegetable Weapons, 2005.....................................................................12
Illustration 9: Francis Bacon, Figure with Meat, 1954............................................................................13
Illustration 10: Alfredo Jaar, The Eyes of Gutete Emerita, 1997.............................................................14
Illustration 11: James Nachtwey. Rwanda, 1994.....................................................................................15
Illustration 12: Sally Mann, Untitled from What Remains, 2001, gelatin silver print with varnish, 30 x
40”............................................................................................................................................................16
Illustration 13: Susan Graham, Sugar Approximation-Browning Semiautomatic Pistol (Yellow), sugar,
egg whites, resin, wood, paint, plexi, 6 x 15 x 8”.
Exhibited at Metaphor Gallery
"War and Peace". NY, NYC. June 23 - August 1, 2004...........................................................................17
Illustration 14: Nina Berman, Purple Hearts: Marine Wedding, photograph, 2007.................................18
Illustration 15: Henry Darger (b. 1892), Untitled, watercolor.................................................................19
Illustration 16: Chen Chien-Jen, Revolt in the Soul and Body: Self-Destruction, 1996, digital print, 41 x
51”............................................................................................................................................................20
Illustration 17: Artist unknown, engraving of water torture (Source: Held, Robert. Inquisition. p.
57 )...........................................................................................................................................................21
Illustration 18: get your war on, posted 10/9/01......................................................................................26

Art, Justice and Epigenetics: a photo-essay of engaged aesthetics