VII Photo contributing photographer Tomas Van Houtryve‘s Blue Sky Days will be on view at OGR Torino in Turin, Italy, from May 2 to June 2, 2024. Part of the group exhibition A View From Above at the Exposed Torino Foto Festival, this series features aerial photographs of gatherings in America—common targets for drone strikes abroad.
“In October 2012, a drone strike in northeast Pakistan killed a 67-year-old woman picking okra outside her house. At a briefing held in 2013 in Washington, DC, the woman’s 13-year-old grandson, Zubair Rehman, spoke to a group of five lawmakers. “I no longer love blue skies,” said Rehman, who was injured by shrapnel in the attack. ‘In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray.’
With my camera attached to a small drone, I traveled across America to photograph the very sorts of gatherings that have become habitual targets for foreign air strikes—weddings, funerals, groups of people praying, or exercising. I also flew my camera over settings in which drones are used to less lethal effect, such as prisons, oil fields, and the U.S.-Mexico border. The images captured from the drone’s perspective engage with the changing nature of surveillance, personal privacy, and war.”
— Tomas van Houtryve
A View From Above is curated by Domenico Quaranta, Salvatore Vitale, and Samuele Piazza and includes works by James Bridle, Laura Cinti, Mario Giacomelli, Mishka Henner, Hiwa K, Tabita Rezaire, Evan Roth, and Susan Schuppli. The exhibition challenges the traditional paradigms of viewing and controlling landscapes, emphasizing the shift to a vertical perspective rooted in surveillance and warfare technology.
