Three pictures about Gaza, and how and why I made them

Over the period January through June 2024, I made a trilogy of pictures about Gaza: Oshkosh Has the Right to Defend Itself; Behind (for Noam Chomsky); and Veto (Merry Xmas from US). I began them out of frustration and despair, something to keep my hands busy. I now see them ideally as a triptych, their frames hinged together in the off-chance they end up hanging on a wall somewhere in each other's company. I here describe what they are about and how I came to make them.

Veto was both the first and the last. In January 2024 I made a digital picture from a scanned, paper negative, using one of my own sort-of invented, lo-fi photographic processes. I apologize that I must now talk a little about my own methods, but they are an important part of what I did and why I did it. I annoyingly refer to this particular technique as “ephemeral process,” but it may also be called accelerated lumen. When used to make direct shadow prints (photograms), it allows me to work in a tiny space in the basement. It uses no harmful chemicals, and both setup and cleanup are quick and easy. The direct result is a paper negative with a lot of physicality and expressiveness. Somewhat ironically, however, the only good way to make a positive from the still-sensitive-to-light negative is to capture it digitally with a scanner. The end product is thus a strictly-virtual digital image.

Since exposure times are only a few minutes long, it is possible to go from concept to completed image in less than one hour. A darkroom is unnecessary; I compose the exposures on a small table, working quickly under dim, indirect light from an ordinary light bulb. The composition of such a photogram exposure comes down to arranging objects on the paper surface (or on a sheet of glass holding the paper flat), positioning the light source so as to control the geometry of the shadows, and then turning on the lamp. The paper darkens visibly, and so the exposure is usually controlled by eye.

I am always on the lookout for suitable photogram objects, and my collection is now up to several boxes, labeled with categories such as ``Small Nature'' and ``Transparent Containers.'' The live 30.06 and 0.38 shells that appear in Veto (Merry Xmas from US) were both found (in separate incidents) in Appleton, WI parking lots. There is some peace in the process of selecting objects and arranging them quickly on the light-sensitive paper while imagining what the final picture might look like. Because of the calming nature of this physical act, I often turn to this process when I am otherwise at a loss. Such was the case for the image, made in early January, 2024, that is the primary source for Veto (Merry Xmas from US). I toyed with submitting the image for publication, but I had second thoughts. Although the act of making it was helpful to me personally, I feared it attempted to depict the direct experience of the people of Gaza, something I am in no position to do.

In response to my misgivings about the image from January, two months later I made Oshkosh Has the Right to Defend Itself, using my new resinotype photographic printing process. This technique uses a thin layer of UV-sensitive photopolymer resin to stick powdered pigments directly to almost any hard surface in order to make a permanent print. All three of the prints in this Gaza Trilogy are new resinotypes.

This time I tried to keep it local, choosing as the focus the grounds of Oshkosh Defense, LLC, whose headquarters (and one of its factories) are only a 15-minute trip down the highway from our home. The print was made from a color image screen-grabbed from Google Earth. It shows a snapshot of part of the grounds, with rows of completed military trucks ready to be shipped off. The color image was separated digitally into three black-and-white images, one each for the primary printing colors cyan, magenta, and yellow. These images were then printed with an inkjet printer onto transparency film, and the transparencies used to expose the photopolymer resin three times, each time dusting it with a different powdered pigment to build up a full-color picture. Before exposing each layer, however, I arranged the cake-baby photogram objects on top of the glass holding down the transparency. More information about Oskosh Defense and its role in the war on Gaza can be found here, and also here.

Veto (Merry Xmas from US) was printed in June, 2024, using the same three-color new resinotype process. The three transparencies for the print were made from a cropped version of my January digital image. The look of this print is markedly different from the digital image. Re-imagined in this way, and accompanied by its title, I feel a little better about it.

Regarding Behind (for Noam Chomsky) in particular, and the commitment to make a trilogy in general, The Night Won’t End: Biden’s War on Gaza was the concrete block that broke the camel's back. I'd already read much about Hind Rajab, but I had not really let it in. As a rule I stick mostly to print, an attempt to keep my head clear. I deal in visuals and know full well their often-undeserved power, and I thus mostly avoid them regarding the news, so as not to be jerked around. At the urgings of Jeffrey St Clair in his Gaza Diary, published weekly in Counterpunch, however, I did fortunately watch this amazing documentary by Kavitha Chekuru and Laila Al-Arian. Seeing these unadorned and matter-of-fact testimonials, sometimes rendered more powerful by a delivery that is simultaneously flat and barely-in-control---surely arising from trauma---what can one do but do something?

Noam Chomsky had a major stroke about a year ago and has been recovering in Brazil, where his wife Valeria is from. The family has kept it all very private, but Valeria Wasserman Chomsky did give a brief interview with the press, and she described Noam's response to watching the news about Gaza from his hospital bed: “He raises his left arm in lament and anger.”

I made Behind with the same new resinotype process as the other two, but it is printed instead onto a thin mirror. Many kinds of powder will work for this process, and for various reasons I have made prints in the past not only with traditional artist pigments, but also with cinnamon, achiote, turmeric, beet powder, blue spirulina, and ground-up Tylenol. In this case I used dust from our house, collected with a soft brush from shelves, ductwork, and the top of the refrigerator. House dust is primarily flat, microscopic flakes of skin---in this particular case my own, that of my wife and partner (also named Valeria), and our cat Tobias. Perhaps there are also some flakes remaining from our dearly departed Boris. The tiny flakes, where they are held by the resin to the mirror surface, scatter incident light in all directions; the mirror itself, on the other hand, reflects light only according to the law of reflection. If illuminated so the mirror reflection misses the viewer, it looks black, while the diffuse scattering from the dust reaches the viewer and so looks bright. The image in the mirror is thus made literally from the shedding of my own skin, and that of my closest companions. You may notice that the edges of the mirror look sharp and irregular. I suppose it is appropriate that the picture is dangerous and could potentially draw blood. The other reason, however, is that I absolutely suck at cutting glass.

I read Chomsky's Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the Palestinians while in graduate school in the late 1980's and early 1990's, and it was crucial for my education. The title's ordering of the corners of the triangle is significant, as it encompasses an important part of Chomsky's long-demonstrated moral philosophy: we are responsible for the predictable consequences of our own actions, and those that are carried out in our name. I recently pulled my old copy of that book off the homemade shelves in the basement and relocated it to the bedside nightstand. Although the details are about current events long past, the foundations for what is happening now are clearly laid out, obvious at the time to anyone who had their eyes open. The complex but tragic interplay between the three corners of this triangle---the tragedy arises from the obviousness that it could have been otherwise---was perhaps in the back of my mind as I chose to allow the three subtractive primaries to synthesize other colors in Oshkosh Has the Right to Defend Itself.

I hope that Behind (for Noam Chomsky) challenges you to, for at least a few seconds, look in the mirror and be Hind. And then do something to the best of your ability, even if it is only possible to raise your left arm in anger and lament. But it challenges me even more; the picture is, after all, made partly from former versions of my own self. In countless interviews over many years, whenever Noam Chomsky is asked why he does what he does, his reply has always been the same: ``So I can look in the mirror.'' It is hard for me to look into this mirror. I see what I have not done.

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