Thirty-six black and white photographs taken by Madison's own Michael Kienitz come together at the Chazen Museum of Art to form a wonderful photo essay called Small Arms: Children of Conflict."" The photographs were taken during Kienitz's world travels from 1978 to 1988, and are powerful in their subject matter and style. Kienitz uses wide-angle shots to give the viewer more than just a portrait of a person, but a portrait of that person's relationship with their surroundings.
In today's high-tech world, society seems to value photography less as a medium for communication and expression and more as a form of documentation. However, photography is an art form with consequences far greater than your parents finding a picture of you with a beer in your hand.
""Small Arms"" makes you think and feel in ways that can be at times uncomfortable, while simultaneously producing a sense of hope that can only make you smile. The photographs are not meant to solely convey death, destruction or lost innocence. Instead, Kienitz presents individuals living out their lives despite the political, social or religious struggles that erupt all around them.
The captivating black and white images force us to look into the faces of the children that have been so adversely affected by adults.
The composition of the photographs themselves adds depth to the scenes by conveying symmetry and balance in a world of such disorder and chaos.
In each photograph at least one person is looking directly into the lens of the camera, staring the viewer in the eye. The ""Mona Lisa"" affect of the child's eyes following you across the gallery is haunting. This connection forces the viewer to interact with the subject and become more than just a voyeur. It is as if the child is telling us we cannot simply sit back and let the destruction continue.
In most of the photographs, the children are outside in what should be free and open space, yet it is ruled by anger, hostility and death. In one image, a smiling young boy stands on a Russian T-34 tank, as if to claim the machine as his new jungle gym. The viewer cannot help but smile back at the boy, but then immediately feel uncomfortable once the scene in its entirety is taken into account.
The images in this exhibit are moving and powerful because children are so often the source of laughter and love. Children are used in commercials to sell products, and yet here they sell a message of destruction, but perhaps hope as well. Their faces are the slogan for peace and unity.
Photography has the unique power to capture a moment in time and render it immortal. The movement of its subjects is implied, but the static quality of facial expressions alludes to an unchanging sense of ideals and morals held by the subjects. Kienitz deftly captures people in their most vulnerable state: youth.
Kienitz forces his audience to question the actions we as adults take against one another, and ingrains in us the images of smiling children surrounded by our wrongdoings. One can only hope this exhibit will instill in people a desire to bring as much balance to the world as the artist brings to his photographs.
