RJG: Air raid Alexandria 1 (Variant)

'Drawing with my Father’s Photos' is a series of works by Denise Green where sliced slivers of drawings of meandering, intricate marks intersect black and white wartime photographs. The photographs were found in the artist’s father's wartime album from his service in the Second World War. This series explores the trauma suffered by her father during his wartime experience, a trauma which has filtered down through her family, inevitably absorbing some of it herself. These photographic montages are a melancholic exploration of the continuing grief and aftermath of war, long after the conflict has passed.

This work includes a photograph (photographer unknown) of a night air raid on Alexandria in Egypt during the Second World War. In this dynamic image anti-aircraft tracer bullets light up the sky and a series of explosions illuminate the horizon in the right of the image. The collaged drawings that have been overlaid in this work chop up and burst forth from the photograph, simulating the abrupt violence and incoherence of the combat experience.