Hand incised, perforated blue carbon paper
29,7 x 21 cm
Private Collection
On the bodies of some Hiroshima survivors, the patterns on the clothing they were wearing, were burnt onto their skin. Unlike the decorations a soldier might wear which commemorate heroic performance, these were imposed ‘decorations’.
I began to experiment with creating images of my own body emblazoned with ‘shadows’ – both in the form of an imposed inherited system of uniform (eg. a school blazer) and contemporary consumer brands influenced by consumer marketing. My awareness grew of how many of the brands people choose to wear, for added perceived value and status, are based on the plant and animal motifs of the heraldry that was used to decorate the victorious, eg. the laurel leaves of the Olympic Games and throughout history in war.
[Photographs by Paul Emmanuel]
