Wortendyke creates mosaics to challenge how we visualise what war is really like.
Wortendyke combines videogame stills, news footage, and photographs.
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The series is called (re):media statement, with Wortendyke aiming to combine three different mediums, challenging what people truly understand about war: “Having never experienced war first-hand I am forced to put my faith in mediated expressions of the thing itself. By combining the imagery I pillage from all these sources, there is a possibility that what I am creating is more real than the individual images themselves.”
Do the images echo the brutality of the frontline?
Wortendyke begins with a blank canvas and then uses her imagination based on all the different sources, and begins to layer the different combinations of images in photoshop. She makes no effort to smooth the different images into each other or try to get a perfect fit, with each montage made up of a selection of smaller images, creating a mosaic that can help educate people on what war is really like.
Wortendyke wants people to think about what it is really like in a war zone.
Essentially, Wortendyke believes that people don’t take enough time to grapple with the concept of war, and what it is really like on the frontline: “Movies mirror videogames which mirror the news and it’s similar to a mirror hall, as each looks at another to see what it looks like,” she explained. “I just want people to slow down and think that just because they see those pictures, they don’t necessarily know what it is really like.”
Distance yourself from the comfort of your home, and think about what it is really like.
How do you feel when you look at Wortendyke’s images? Does it change the way you think about war, and what it is really like? Leave your opinion in the comments section below.
