Battlesight: Installation

Battlesight: Dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan by International Photographers
The Arts Center of the Capital Region, October 22 through December 19, 2010
Opening reception, October 29, 5-9 pm

Press: The Troy Record

The Troy Record, October 21, 2010

Art Center explores wars’ savage beauty

By Phil Drew
The Record

A man clutches a wounded child; both are grimy, peering out of darkness in the black and white photo. The man’s gaze is not toward the combat photographer who has snapped the image — embedded with U.S. troops fighting in the mountains and villages of eastern Afghanistan — but somewhere upward; toward an unseen soldier towering behind the cameraman, perhaps? Toward a bystander? Toward heaven?

Despite obviously severe wounds, the child appears calm, if grim, gaze directed the way as his protector’s. Are they imploring, accusing? Or simply presenting themselves to their unseen interlocutor, heavenly or worldly, proclaiming, ‘here I am,’ ‘deal with me?’ Crouching next to them, an older man touches the child; a doctor giving treatment? A village elder? A mullah? The youngster’s grandfather?

 There is something almost spiritual in the pose of man and child, reminiscent of the ‘Pieta’ yet shockingly contemporary. And the man laying on hands? "Something almost, dare I say it, rabbinical about that," says Timothy Cahill, showing off the image by photojournalist Balasz Gardi – one of three independent photographers whose work is on display through Dec. 19 in the main gallery of downtown Troy’s Arts Center of the Capital Region.

 "These pictures bring us to empathy," says Cahill. "It’s impossible to look at these photographs, to really look at them, and not, after going around the room, to feel connected with these other human beings."

Gardi’s work, along with that of Cheryl Diaz Meyer and Teru Kuwayama, makes up "Battlesight: Dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan by International Photographers" – sponsored by the year-old Center for Documentary Arts at The Sage Colleges.

The images, curated by Cahill, the center’s founding director, are artful, beautiful photography, worthy of a gallery; but they are also reportage, unblinking, close-up, of the effects of war, psychological and physical and visceral. Their combined effect is not polemical and argumentative but a jolt of reality: "it strips us of abstraction," says Cahill.

Read full article here

The card . . .

Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, New York
October 22 through December 19, 2010
Opening Reception, October 29

Press Release

For Immediate Release 

October 4, 2010 

Battlesight: Dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan by International Photographers
October 22 – December 19 Reception: Friday, October 29, 5:30 – 9:00 P.M.

Free and Open to the Public

Presented by the Center for Documentary Arts in cooperation with The Arts Center of the Capital Region. 

Curated by Timothy Cahill

TROY, NY – The Arts Center of the Capital Region and the Center for Documentary Arts at The Sage Colleges is pleased to present Battlesight: Dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan by International Photographers, a new documentary photography exhibit opening in mid‐October. The exhibit is a powerful collection of wartime images from Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond by three renowned photographers whose work records the realities of life for combatants and civilians alike in lands far from most Americans’ view. The photographers, Cheryl Diaz Meyer, Balazs Gardi, and Teru Kuwayama, all international award recipients, represent a variety of approaches to contemporary photojournalism, from traditional news reportage to intimately interpretative documentary art. Battlesight is organized by Timothy Cahill, director of the Center for Documentary Arts, in cooperation with the Arts Center of the Capital Region and the Sage Colleges’ “Veterans Week 2010.”

Cheryl Diaz Meyer Dust Storm, Second Tank 

Battalion, U.S. Marines,  Iraq, 2003

Cheryl Diaz Meyer shared the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography with David Leeson for their “eloquent photographs depicting both the violence and poignancy of the war with Iraq,” made while both were senior staff photographers at The Dallas Morning News. Diaz Meyer covered the US‐led invasion of Iraq as an embedded journalist attached to the Second Tank Battalion of the First Marine Division. After the fall of Baghdad, she continued to cover the aftermath as a unilateral journalist. She has returned to Iraq numerous times, to cover the capture of Saddam Hussein and the infamous “spider hole,” the Al Mehdi death squads, the Iranian infiltration into Basra, and the regions tormented women, who set themselves on fire in an ancient practice of self-immolation. Diaz Meyer's work in Iraq was also awarded the Visa D’Or Daily Press Award 2003 at Visa Pour L’Image in Perpignan, France.

Balazs Gardi, Afghan man and wounded boy, 

Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, East Afghanistan,  2007

Balazs Gardi is a Hungarian photographer who documents the everyday life of marginalized peoples and communities facing humanitarian crises. He has photographed the effects of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan both as a unilateral journalist and embedded with troops from the United States, Canada, and Britain. His current long‐term project, “Facing Water Crisis,” examines, as he writes, “the vital yet destructive presence, crippling absence and strategic value of water worldwide.” Now working independently, Gardi was staff photographer at Nepszabadsag, Hungary’s largest national daily, from 1996 to 2003. He studied journalism and photography in Budapest and at the University of Wales, Cardiff. Among his numerous honors are the Prix Bayeux War Correspondents Award, the PX3 Photographer of the Year Award, three World Press Photo awards, a PDN Photography Prize, and the Global Vision Award from Pictures of the Year International. He is the recipient of grants from the Alexia Foundation for World Peace and Getty Images. He has photographed the effects of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan both as a unilateral journalist and embedded with troops from the United States, Canada, and Britain. His current long‐term project, “Facing Water Crises,” examines, as he writes, “the vital yet destructive presence, crippling absence and strategic value of water worldwide.” Now working independently, Gardi was staff photographer at Nepszabadsag, Hungary’s largest national daily, from 1996 to 2003. He studied journalism and photography in Budapest and at the University of Wales, Cardiff. Among his numerous honors are the Prix Bayeux War Correspondents Award, the PX3 Photographer of the Year Award, three World Press Photo awards, a PDN Photography Prize, and the Global Vision Award from Pictures of the Year International. He is the recipient of grants from the Alexia Foundation for World Peace and Getty Images.


Teru Kuwayama has published photographs in Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, Outside, Fortune, and Vibe, among other publications. His work on the Tibetan refugee diaspora received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, and were exhibited at the United Nations and the Open Society Institute. The University at Albany graduate was named by Esquire as among the “Best and Brightest” of his generation for his reportage on the occupation of Iraq, and PDN included his work on Kashmir in a selection of 2005’s most iconic images in contemporary photography. In 2006 he received a Nikon Storyteller Award, a Days Japan International Photojournalism Award, and a W. Eugene Smith fellowship for his work in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Kuwayama is co‐founder of Lightstalkers, a professional and social network of photographers, media professionals, NGO workers, military personnel, and other “unconventional travelers.” He recently completed a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and received a 2010 Knight News Challenge award. He is currently a 2010 TED Global Fellow and 2010 Ochberg Fellowship at Columbia University's DART Center for Journalism & Trauma.
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Teru Kuwayama, The ruins of Kabul, Afghanistan, 2002 

Timothy Cahill is founding director of the Center for Documentary Arts at The Sage Colleges, a cultural/educational initiative for using art to raise humanitarian awareness and foster compassion. The Center for Documentary Arts, established in 2009, defines “documentary art” as those narrative forms of photography, film, oral history, theater, painting, poetry, etc. that address social themes and bears witness to the human condition. The Center’s conviction is that this “witnessing art” is a vital tool for stimulating personal empathy and collective engagement. In addition to his work at CDA, Mr. Cahill is a writer, editor, and visual artist. He was the art critic and cultural reporter for the Albany Times Union from 1996 to 2006, and art correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor from 1995–2007. His writing has won numerous awards and honors, including a National Arts Journalism Program mid‐career fellowship at Columbia University. Mr. Cahill has exhibited his photography in journals, galleries, and museums. His photographs are in the permanent collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art.

Gallery Hours
Monday – Thursday | 11AM – 7PM 

Friday + Saturday | 9AM – 5PM 

Sunday | 12 – 4PM

About The Arts Center: For nearly 50 years, The Arts Center of the Capital Region has enriched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. A regional arts center, it offers classes, camps, exhibits and performing arts events. Artists of all ages and abilities are encouraged, mentored, and nurtured in a collaborative, supporting and accepting environment.

The Arts Center’s 36,000 square feet of space include discipline‐specific studios for pottery, printmaking, culinary arts, jewelry making, woodworking, painting and drawing, stained glass and dance, among others. It also includes a 99‐seat theater for performing arts events, and its three galleries are noted for their critically acclaimed contemporary exhibits.

Learn more about The Arts Center of the Capital Region and its offerings at www.artscenteronline.org .

Contacts: 

Timothy Cahill, Curator and Director of the Center for Documentary Arts 

cahillt@sage.edu  

(518) 292‐1951 

Caroline Corrigan, Exhibits Manager at The Arts Center of the Capital Region 

caroline@artscenteronline.org  

518.273.0552 x 222