Show of Force by David Degner

Public Story

Show of Force

Copyright David Degner 2024

Updated Apr 2023

Location United States

Topics art [featured], Feature, personal [featured]

Summary

A show of force is a military operation intended to warn or intimidate an opponent by showcasing a capability or will to act. In this ongoing project, I use infrared photography originally developed for military surveillance, to highlight and transpose current performances of force in American cities. Through these photos, the camouflage of modern militant clothing and equipment burns brightly in a jarring shade of pink. The infrared photo technology initially created for sylvan military reconnaissance now alerts the viewer to an unnaturally armed presence in civilian urban environments.

To the human eye, camouflage blends in with trees and bushes. Infrared film, developed as a military technology, reacts to the presence of chlorophyll, marking true vegetation pink to identify military positions through their absence of unnatural hues. In response, modern military paint and uniforms have evolved to mimic vegetation in its spectral signature, thus eluding infrared detection in the jungle. Now, the military paraphernalia appears just as pink on infrared film as the foliage surrounding them.

In Boston, as in many other American cities during the Spring and Summer of 2020, military police were summoned in response to Black Lives Matter protests. Deployed in an American downtown, infrared cameras are again able to highlight the presence of the military, now marked foreign by its ersatz vegetal signature in a civilian concrete environment. This aberrant pink, alongside the ambiguous gazes of the police and soldiers who are the subjects of these photos, destabilizes their presence, challenging viewers on both sides of a hardening cultural divide to consider these people from a different perspective.

The project is a continuation of Richard Mosse’s work in the DRC where the visual irony – brutal realism painted in candy-colored fuzz – was completely intentional. I bring the process back to the US as a warning, to highlight the brutal potential here.

See full photo project here

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David Degner

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