Hall of Shadows

“I am not going to pass any judgment on the policy of devastating the country. I obey orders, and perhaps it is a wise plan.” (R L Wallace, "The Australians at the Boer War", 1976).

Hall of Shadows is a photographic investigation of the social, ethical and human terrain created by war crimes perpetrated by Australian Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan against civilians and prisoners of war. The project responds to "The Brereton Report", a heavily redacted Australian Federal Government inquiry that is a partially closed window into these events. The work is also informed by Jack McLain’s personal experience while serving in US Special Forces in Afghanistan between 2001-2004. The three works that make up Hall of Shadows are: Hall of Shadows, a series of fifteen wet plate collodion tintypes of toy soldiers mounted and framed in a grid. It echoes a series of stained glass windows found at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra; It’s Only The News, a series of digitally composited images on newsprint of plastic figures overlaid onto images of redacted pages directly from "The Brereton Report"; and The Memory of Dust, a series of handcrafted albumen prints made from digital photographs created by Jack McLain while deployed in Afghanistan overlaid with redacted pages from "The Brereton Report".

It's Only The News, 2021  

photographs  

600mmx 850mm

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