Girl out of focus

2020
photograph
30 x 34 cm

Artist statement

I took this photograph while my platoon was on operations in South Vietnam in early 1969. We had passed through a small village and the girl was standing alone, watching us – strangers carrying weapons. I didn’t ask to take the photo – which was another intrusion. It wasn’t until many years later, when I had the film processed, that I realised the girl was out of focus with the rest of the photo. It seemed then, and now, that her ghost-like image was appropriate in that pointless war.