Hidden

Paul Seawright was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to visit Afghanistan during 2002 after much of the devastation had been unleashed on the country. Avoiding the trappings of an exoticizing vision, best typified by the photojournalist’s portrait of Afghanistan as a spectacle of ruins, his series of pictures is spare, subdued, understated and quiet. Seawright’s responses to the terrain of the destroyed and heavily mined desert landscapes of Afghanistan, draws upon, extends and reworks the distinctive aesthetic the artist had established through earlier photographic work, made first within his home city, Belfast. In war-torn Afghanistan, Seawright is less concerned with the visible scars of war, but instead the hidden malevolence of its landscapes.

Paul Seawright will represent Wales at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.