British Photographer Reveals Wars Are Nearer Than We Suppose

New York, May 2026. “Distortion / Memory / Resilience,” the exhibition by British photographer and humanitarian Giles Duley.

Tanya Nikolaenko

British photographer Giles Dudley introduced an immersive pop-up exhibition, Distortion / Memory / Resilience, to the U.S., exhibiting that wars are nearer to us than we would assume.

“War is not far from us, both generationally and geographically,” stated Duley, a British photographer and humanitarian, about his new undertaking Distortion / Memory / Resilience — an immersive exhibition he dropped at New York in May. He stated, “Many of us on this metropolis have a grandparent who in all probability fought in World War II or fought in some battle. It’s related to our story.”

Set excessive above New York, overlooking Manhattan and the East River, in a large penthouse inside Sutton Tower, the exhibition is about struggle however virtually doesn’t present fight immediately. It is much less a images present than an immersive meditation on reminiscence and trauma that highlights how battle repeats throughout generations.

“The whole project really is very autobiographical,” stated Duley, who misplaced each legs and his left arm after stepping on an landmine in Afghanistan in 2011. For greater than twenty years, Duley has documented conflicts, usually specializing in communities ignored by mainstream protection. “I always said I’m not a photojournalist,” he says. “I’m an angry man with a camera.”

Duley says his earlier work was pushed by the necessity to attract consideration to conflicts that obtained little worldwide focus. He recollects first touring to Ukraine in 2010 and returning in 2014, when combating in japanese Ukraine remained largely absent from broader European political discourse.

“Even in 2014, when I first went to Ukraine to cover the war, nobody in Europe was really talking about the fact that there was a war happening within Europe,” he says.

Awareness of navy conflicts and wars has modified with the rise of social media and fixed publicity to world crises. Now, persons are overwhelmed, Duley says: “When people are overwhelmed, they become inactive.”

The exhibition displays what he describes as his transition from photographer to artist — utilizing not solely photographs but in addition bodily house, sound, and historic juxtaposition to create emotional continuity between previous and current conflicts.

In one room, he has reconstructed a bed room impressed by a younger Ukrainian lady sheltering within the rest room throughout Russian assaults. A stay air-raid alert related to Kyiv sounded periodically all through the set up. The penthouse window had been reworked right into a digital camera obscura, projecting an inverted picture of Manhattan into the darkened inside.

“It’s the sense of how everything is taken away from you and distorted,” Duley says. “And yet your eyes start to adjust. In many ways, people become accustomed to conflict and war.”

Another room facilities on childhood trauma. The drawings made by Ukrainian youngsters affected by the struggle had been supplied to guests to the touch and look via whereas listening to recordings of their tales. “The paintings are done by some of the most traumatized kids in Ukraine,” Dudley stated. This highlighted the distinction between the peaceable New York skyline outdoors and the testimonies contained in the room.

Historical layering runs all through the exhibition. Duley pairs images from modern Ukraine with imagery from the Second World War, World War I, and conflicts within the Middle East. One pairing connects a well-known 1940 {photograph} of a British woman injured throughout the Blitz with a portrait Duley fabricated from a younger Lebanese woman in Beirut in 2024.

“I looked at her and said, ‘That’s the photograph I grew up seeing,’” he says. “It’s the same story. It’s the same person.”

The thought emerged partly from Duley’s family historical past. His mom labored as a nurse in London throughout the Blitz, and most of the tales he heard rising up now echo what he encounters in Ukraine.

Throughout the exhibition, repaired ceramic objects reference the Japanese observe of kintsugi, the place cracks are repaired with gold reasonably than hid. For Duley, the idea grew to become central to the exhibition’s understanding of resilience.

“We should not hide our trauma. We should not hide our scars,” he says. “But celebrate them, mark them with gold, and say, ‘I’m proud of who I am.’”

Duley speaks overtly about his personal accidents. In 2011, whereas working in Afghanistan, he stepped on a IED landmine and misplaced each legs and his left arm. He spent practically a 12 months within the hospital and underwent 37 operations.

“I was broken, my body, by hatred,” he says. “But I was rebuilt by love.”

That expertise now informs each his art work and his humanitarian work via the Legacy of War Foundation, which operates medical and rehabilitation applications in Ukraine. The group has offered healthcare help in Ukraine, rehabilitation help for injured veterans, and grants for native Ukrainian organizations.

Doing the present in New York had particular significance for an artist from Europe. “What I’m trying to do is show people that all these wars interconnect, that actually wars are only one generation or one nation away,” Duley stated.

Ukraine stays the central focus of Duley’s present work. He says the nation’s wrestle can’t be separated from broader European and world historical past.

“The ideas, the values that our grandparents fought for,” Dudley stated, “are exactly the same as what Ukrainians are fighting for each day. These are the reasons I believe we should stand with Ukraine.”