Concrete Playground

°SOUTH:WAR offers a sobering reflection of what war, in our day and age, has come to mean. Photographers Sean Flynn, Tim Page, Stephen Dupont, David Dare Parker, Jack Picone, Ben Bohane, Michael Coyne and Ashley Gilbertson make up the collective °SOUTH. Since the 1960s, they have been covering was and its effects first hand, often at their own risk. You get a sense of these photographers' tireless dedication to their subject (which must largely be very difficult to persevere with, while also being one that is educational and significant) in the images they make. These are expansive, confronting, at times poetic, and always honest.

In my life, and that of many others, war and devastation is someone else's reality. We are fortunate to not know its nature, but for many this is not the case. These images, the photographers' work, show us that war is not as it once was, a distant fact of the battlefield, "now it is streets, alleyways, schools and places of worship" (°SOUTH).

Image: Ashley Gilbertson, Polish Peace Keepers sunbathing, Karbala, Iraq, 2008