Toy Soldiers attempts to span new boundaries between documentary and art in the quest for a new dialogue and perspective on how war and conflict is represented.
As 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of conflict in Western Sahara Toy Soldiers investigates the impact and psychological consequences of non-resolution and containment on the real soldiers -posed as toy soldiers- born from a historic cycle of colonial conflict, invisibility and the de-humanising effects of war. Exploring the paradigm of conflict through our cultural notions of freedom, nationhood and entertainment, Toy Soldiers attempts to create a dialogue via the viewing of modern conflict as war games through Africa’s last colony, where freedom and nationhood exist suspended as a concept.
The act of posing real soldiers as toy soldiers draws on several narratives both historical and contemporary.
- Via the direct reference to controversial and culturally iconic imagery such as Robert Capa’s Falling Soldier and Joe Rosenthal’s Flag Raising on Iwo Jima and their projection onto the unfamiliar, the project asks questions on the issues of power and propaganda.
-Drawing from the works of current artists such as An-My Lé and John Gerrard with influences by past masters such as Roger Fenton’s Crimean war documents, Toy Soldiers attempts to further blur the boundaries between the accepted genres of documentary photography and art. Via a reality re-constructed, the performance of which, attempts to challenges our ideas of traditional war reportage in the search for new perspectives on conflict through the formation of a the new archive on war.
At its heart Toy Soldiers Project is an allegory of war via a unique collaboration between an artist and a military commander. Toy Soldiers, a story of war, is shot entirely on location in the hauntingly isolated and beautiful territory known as Liberated Western Sahara in the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
Through this little known conflict Toy Soldiers explores multiple complex aspects of our culture, relationship to war and the ubiquitous consumption of images of War and the relationship between the increasingly indistinguishable nature of real images of conflict and their fantasy portrayal as entertainment.
((NOTE: Toy Soldiers consists of 130 images divided into 3 chapters. See also Toy Soldiers Book sent to accompany a book entry for a thorough perspective on the project))