Even though World Press winner Donald Weber recently said to GUP that he is patient and therefore ‘a bad war photographer’, his new work is entirely focused on war. In a series called War Is Good* When the Right Side Wins Weber shows how war is part of everyday life for many people.

In 2011 he photographed Kurds in post-war Iraq. In these photographs, people are hanging out in the streets, picnicking with their lovers, or working in offices. The Kurds are an example of how war can turn out well, at least for one side: after centuries of oppression, in 2005 Bush’s Iraqi war left the stateless Kurds with a safe area to live. Iraqi Kurdistan is now an autonomous region in which Kurdish is one of the official languages.

But while Weber has photographed recreation in post-war Kurdistan, he also photographed soldiers in training and children playing around tanks. Through Weber’s lens, war appears simultaneously as both a stabilising and a destabilising factor. In his artist’s statement Weber says that the increasing amount of stateless people in the world and the development of war technology create a constant threat of war. In War Is Good* the viewer is witness to mundane daily life in a post-war situation, but while watching the series one is also faced by the threat of war as an ever-present reality.  

www.donaldweber.com