This is the most unusual email received this week.
Disko Bay presents Paula Duvå’s Killer Machine (the sublime sky, clouds, camouflage smoke disrupting heat seeking missiles, fighter planes removed), a book that challenge our perception of the sky delving into a body of work that explores questions of space, technology, and politics. The work is a comment on the Danish states purchase of 27 new F-35 fighter jets whereas the first planes are delivered the same week as the book is released.
Paula Duvå takes documentary photography into the hyper-real, as a concrete trace of war, when she documents camouflage smoke trails from fighter jets and missiles captured during various military airshows and demonstrations throughout Denmark. The jets themselves are either gone from the frame or digitally removed, leaving only the traces behind.In the book, Duvå repeatedly examines the same motif, resulting in a series of landscape photographs that transform the sky images into something reminiscent of war photography. Duvå’s works go beyond merely documenting the beauty of the sky and also delve into the territorial, mythical, and war-filled space that the sky represents asking: Who owns this space, and what do we truly see when we look up?
Paula Duvå (b. 1991) is living and working in Copenhagen. Killer Machine is her first book.
Softcover, 15 × 19 cm, 400 pages, Printed in Denmark by Narayana Press, ISBN 978-87-973526-7-0, Published 5 October 2023, Price €35
Distributed worldwide via Idea Books.
www.diskobay.org
