The Shots Of A Man Who Was Shot

I left the artist and took a thoughtful trip across the capital today to listen to a necessary talk given to 30 or so people by a man who also works in images. Only he is not an artist. And his images are from when he was helicoptered into a lofty war-zone and three months ago helicoptered - seriously wounded - out again. (The bullet ripped through his spleen, lower left abdomen, colon, stomach, and left again in a hurry through two exit points.) I was there for some general info but came away with a great deal more. It was immediately atmospheric, almost fetching. The lights came down and the images were projected between him and an amiable man with a military background. The commentary was lucid and informative and unusually frank. Indeed, he talked with a kind of enlightened intimacy, especially about being shot. (His unit was responding to support another unit that had been ambushed.) You could say that what I find lacking in some contemporary art - humanity, courage, etc - I can see in an abundance in this man's work. It was like going on a journey with him, and you had in the course of this journey become his eyes, excuse, light-meter, conscience. (As I understood it, all but one of the men he was with were shot.) The fact the images were black and white made it all the more surreal. I knew this part of the world and had taken black and white images there myself, though this was during a different conflict. I also appreciated the fact that - just like the man I saw yesterday - he was able to say with conviction that the presence of the soldiers there was not only largely welcomed but clearly justified. Back to the pictures. Image-wise - as I wanted to tell the artist later - I was struck by the following. There was the image of a dog adopted by troops in a mountain look-out surrounded for at least three to four months of the winter by snow. There was a shot of a bare-chested young recruit doing press-ups in the snow. There was the impossibly - strangely familiar - steep paths across which heavily armed men had to patrol. (There was the story of a 19 year-old who slipped and died.) There were simple images of their improvised living quarters - very different to the sickening number of smug lifestyle shots presently peppering the newspaper landscape. There was a picture of some bangles with engraved names of dead friends. There were the dollar-bought piles of surrendered weapons. And then there was the attack: the one that did it for him. They reckon now the sniper was from another country. The only thing the man giving the talk couldn't work out - he said - was where in the landscape was the POO. He waited. 'Point of Origin,' he smiled.