Press
Press Release
Developed in North Africa from 2018-2024, this part-documentary, part-speculative project is based on a poignant and personal experience: the death and disappearance of Edgar Martins’ close friend, photojournalist Anton Hammerl, during the 2011 Libyan war. Hammerl’s harrowing story serves as a springboard to explore the decisive but paradoxical role that photography has played in conflict zones, the misinformation ecosystem surrounding modern conflict, and the representation of death and personal loss.
Drawing inspiration from the writings of Georges Didi-Huberman and Georges Perec, and through a meta-representational approach that looks beyond the referent – which the artist terms ‘impossible document’ – the project seeks innovative approaches to respond to war, photographic ethics, bereavement and missing persons.
Like Perec and Didi-Huberman’s work, this story is warped by absences. It speaks of the difficulty of documenting, testifying, witnessing, remembering, and imagining war.
This exhibition features immersive, multi-media installations encompassing original and archival photography, civilian imagery sourced from private Islamist, Libyan and dark web forums, sound, custom slideshows and equipment recovered from the Libyan conflict, such as mobile phones and 35mm photographic cameras.
This expansive and multifaceted exhibition is accompanied by a photobook by the same title, Martins’ most ambitious and personal monograph to date.
Anton’s Hand is made of Guilt. No Muscle of Bone. He has a Gung-ho Finger and a Grief-stricken Thumb. is the final iteration of Martins’ Our War, a project which earned the artist several prestigious accolades, including the Sony World Photographer of the Year 2023, the International Photography Awards Film Photographer of the Year 2023, and the Juror’ Choice Category of the Hariban Award 2023.
