Tomas Van Houtryve | Blue Sky Days: A Drone's-Eye View: Presented as part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival

14 - 30 May 2016
Works
Overview

"By creating these images, I aim to draw attention to the changing nature of personal privacy, surveillance, and contemporary warfare. Underpinning my work is a belief that human activity becomes increasingly absurd and dangerous when it loses empathy. I agree with Albert Camus when he said, "By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more." 

-Thomas van Houtryve

 

In October 2012, a drone strike in northeast Pakistan killed a 67-year-old woman picking okra outside her home. At a U.S. Congressional hearing held in Washington in October 2013, the woman's 13-year­old grandson, Zubair Rehman, spoke to a group of lawmakers. "I no longer love blue skies," said Rehman, who was injured by shrapnel in the attack. "In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray." 

Installation Views