Wafaa Bilal’s “The Ashes Series”

Wafaa Bilal began collecting photographs for his “Ashes Series” shortly after the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003. Bilal lost his brother in 2005, in a U.S. missile strike near their home in Najaf, Iraq. He told me that he wanted to help people to establish an emotional connection with the flood of images produced by the war. Toward that end, he built miniature reconstructions of the scenes depicted in the press photographs he found. Before photographing his models, he dusted them with human ashes—an effort, he says, to establish a human presence in the otherwise unpeopled scenes. Bilal, who is a former professor of mine, told me that he hopes to provoke a sense of unease, and to trigger “the viewer’s search for an answer from among the ashes and ruins.” His intention, he says, “was to bring people to these lost places and engage them to look closer, instead of turning away at the sight of destruction.”

“The Ashes Series” is on view at the Driscoll Babcock Galleries through June 14th. All photos courtesy of Wafaa Bilal/Driscoll Babcock Galleries.