This is the latest show at the Side Gallery in Newcastle and is easily the most harrowing one they have shown for some time. Also it has surprising relevance to certain aspects of this module on landscape.
There has been quite a lot of publicity about this work recently as it has been nominated for a number of awards and has featured in a recent issue of the BJP.
This work is about the end of the ISIS caliphate in Syria (Raqqa specifically) and Iraq (Mosul) and focuses primarily on how the conflict affected and impacted directly upon the ordinary people caught up in the conflict. It goes on to explore the experiences of people from these areas, and elsewhere affected by conflict, such as Afghanistan, in their efforts to find safety and sanctuary in Europe (and I defy anyone to come away from these images without a sense of outrage that these poor people have been received in so many places in the west with hostility and disdain, as if they were criminals rather than people literally fleeing for their lives, and in too many cases losing them in the process). It is all very powerful and deeply moving work and how Pickett has apparently not been traumatised by what he has seen and experienced is beyond my comprehension, though I have the deepest admiration for it.
For the purposes of this module though I would rather, albeit most reluctantly, concentrate more on the landscape elements in his work. As well as showing the people he shows how their cities and homes have been devastated by the war and how their landscapes have been changed, possibly irrevocably. Take for example this picture of volunteers recovering bodies in Raqqa:
This is unfortunately not at all a good copy so I suggest getting a better view on the Panos site referred to below, or looking at a physical copy of the BJP (the double page spread at 72 & 73).
This is a big print and the shattered landscape of the city is the main subject. The people who appear in the frame are tiny in comparison and dwarfed by the devastation. In common with much of Prickets work in this show the amount of detail he has matured, the sharpness and depth of field are breathtaking. What they, and this picture in particular, bring to mind are some of the big works of Ansel Adams, which have a similarly almost hallucinatory effect: masses of detail, huge depth of field, a strange flattening of perspective. Also come to mind some of the paintings that I discussed in connection with the establishment of conventions within landscape painting. Particularly those of Bierstadt where people are included in the scene in order to emphasise the scale of the landscape around them.
I do not know whether he was consciously affected by these earlier works but certainly it seems to me the parallels are there to be drawn.
Another parallel that strikes me is with the work of Jeff Wall (thinking particularly of things like his picture of dead Russian soldiers in Afghanistan). This work is all real but some of it almost becomes hyper-real, there is so much detail, so that it has some of the air constructed images. I suppose in a way what is happening here is that Prickett has managed to convey more of the reality, the detail, the grit and dirt, the death and destruction as he saw it than we are perhaps used to seeing in press photos (which is not a phrase that to my mind really does this work full justice) so that my observation is far from pejorative but is rather, I hope, an accolade for its quality.
I had lots of other reactions to this work as I lingered in the gallery. So many though were so personal and emotional – I do not remember when I was last moved in quite this way by photographs – that I think it is better for now to keep them to myself and content with these few technical observations.
British Journal of Photography, Issue 7887, September 2019
https://www.amber-online.com/event/side-gallery/ivor-prickett-end-of-the-caliphate-seeking-shelter/
https://www.bjp-online.com/2018/02/ivor-prickett-world-press-photo-of-the-year-double-nominee/
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 
One thought on “Ivor Prickett: End of the Caliphate & Seeking Shelter – Exhibition”