For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to war.
- James Nachtwey
Brotherhood is a complex term that comprehends an array of relationships and interactions between people. This exhibition explores how these relationships manifest within different times and places of war. Through photographs from a variety of wars, countries, and time periods, the exhibition communicates the universality of brotherhood as an essential facet of the human condition, examining this concept through five lenses: camaraderie, hazing, isolation and injury, beyond death, and gender. These different perspectives and their associated photographs provide a framework to unpack the nuanced nature of this term. Interviews with several Dartmouth student veterans provide greater human context to the idea of brotherhood the spaces of war that are inaccessible to civilians. In addition, they provide a bridge between the disparate spheres of Dartmouth undergraduate life and war. The hope is that viewers will come away with a greater understanding of the human elements of war, regardless of political stance on war itself. War and brotherhood create an intricate web of social dynamics; this exhibition seeks to shed light on these unique relationships through the lens of war photography.
As anyone who has experienced it will know, war is many contradictory things. There is brutality and heroism, comedy and tragedy, friendship, hate, love, and boredom. War is absurd yet fundamental, despicable yet beguiling, unfair yet with its own strange logic.
- Tim Hetherington
Gina Campanelli ’18 graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in Art History, as well as a minor in Anthropology. She also completed a pre-med curriculum. As a student, she was a curatorial intern for the Hood Museum of Art, working primarily with Bonnie MacAdams, curator of American art. Gina developed an interest in war photography through the art history course War and the Ethics of Witnessing, taught by Professor Chad Elias. She finds the raw power of these photographs and the unique socio-historical conditions in which they were created fascinating. After several conversations with friends who are veterans, she became interested in the unique types of bonds that form between soldiers in the spaces of war. Due to the conditions of war itself, these relationships almost constitute a culture of their own, something she wanted to explore within this exhibition through the visual medium of photography.
Special thanks to Taylor Mauney, Allyssa Austin, Zach Jaynes, Colton Carlson, and Julie Reed for sharing their stories and experiences and bringing this exhibition to life.
Thank you to Amelia Kahl, Bonnie MacAdam, Jay Beaudoin, Natalie Jung, and the staff at the Hood Museum of Art for their help, guidance, and support in realizing this exhibition.
References
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