Pages of Power
Portrait
Industry
Fine Art
Year
2010
Client
Personal Work
Pages of Power
“Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.”
— Heinrich Heine
Banning books, suppressing intellectualism, and restricting free speech have long been precursors to horrific violence. With this in mind, I created a body of work aimed to bring some of these atrocities into discussion.
During the Cambodian genocide, the Khmer Rouge targeted anyone with an education, destroying books and executing teachers in an attempt to erase intellectual thought and enforce absolute ideological control. At Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21, a former school turned into a notorious prison, thousands of innocent people were tortured and executed. Victims were photographed as part of the regime’s brutal process, with each individual often assigned a number and documented before their torture. I incorporated these photos with text and quotes describing these atrocities in an effort to remind people how easily it is to be deemed an enemy of the state.
Similarly, the Berlin Wall stood as a physical and ideological barrier, preventing the free exchange of ideas between East and West, with East German authorities censoring literature and imprisoning those caught with banned materials. Utilizing a book about the Berlin Wall, I incorporated elements that reflected the actual structure, such as ‘barbed’ wire fencing and ‘graffiti.’ The two pieces that would appear on either side of the ‘wall’ when displayed are identical except for the Red book that is bound and silenced. In contrast, the other book, which is displayed as open and free with its chaotic, twisted ideas held together by a multitude of threads.
In Rwanda, radio broadcasts and propaganda were weaponized to incite hatred, replacing open discourse with a singular, violent narrative that fueled the 1994 genocide. For this book, I designed a fold-out layout that unfolded into two sides: one highlighting the suffering of the Tutsi people, and the other detailing the atrocities committed by the Hutus. Using bold type choices, news articles and quotes from broadcasts, I set out to show how people can be manipulated to commit horrific acts. Time and again, history has shown that when knowledge is silenced, brutality follows.
