Second Sky

Aiming to reintroduce “the complex and the unfamiliar” into images of conflict (photographs that by nature reduce complex sociopolitical matters to simple images of good versus bad or right versus wrong), Curtis Mann radically alters color prints of conflict images, varnishes portions of the photographs, and bleaches away the unvarnished portions to create compositions in which only partial truths can be perceived. The visual shock of the work leads the viewer to question the nature of photographic truth and those elements that might not be depicted or understood in any photograph or situation.