Badach Uses Gunpowder as Pigment in “Land of Epic Battles”

An opening reception for Land of Epic Battles, an exhibition by Philadelphia-based photographer Justyna Badach (Photography ’98) , and 2018 Transmedia Photography Annual on Thursday, is being held at Light Work February 1 from 5-7 p.m. Reception guests are invited to join the artist at 6 p.m. for an in-gallery talk about her current solo-exhibition on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery. Land of Epic Battles features Badach’s new series of large, hand-made dichromate prints, made using film stills from ISIS training videos. For a year she experimented with darkroom techniques before discovering a 19th-century process that would allow her to use gunpowder as a pigment. The resulting incendiary prints initially look like antiquated documentation of Middle Eastern sites and landscapes. The texture of the heavy-weight watercolor paper needed for this process adds a layer of abstraction more akin to the language of drawing and painting than photography. Rather than using images of carnage and gore, for which ISIS videos are infamous, Badach’s edit reveals a vast, enduring, and majestic landscape that dwarfs the players in the conflict and exposes the futility of war.