“I no longer love blue skies” by Antar Kuri Gomez

About Nicholas Constant’s Predator/Protector photographic series

“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game”

Jagger and Richards. The Rolling Stones. Beggars Banquet. 1968.

Nicholas Constant, in his series of photographs titled Predator/Protector—a group of landscape images, a couple of objects including a statue, and various buildings—quotes Zubair Rehman. A Pakistani 13-year-old boy who lost a family member and got injured by a US drone attack. Zubair talks about the impact of drone technology on his life and community, altered customs, and physical and psychological trauma (1). Nicholas places text next to Predator/Protector photographs to contrast perception and spark inquiry. The Zubair quote portrays with words the precise image Nicholas wants us to see, even though his photographs show a different picture.

And so the image of a playground in Waddington (Lincolnshire, UK), one image in the Predator/Protector series, gets a different impression after reading about Zubair, the boy who “prefers gray skies” over blue ones because drones go away in such weather. Interestingly, Nicholas photographs the playground under a gray sky. Almost purporting a contradictory similitude, the opposition between image and text advances and recedes installing an extraneous feeling of nowhere. Are we perceiving a collapse of distance? The meddling of here and there? 

Following this suspicion that something is off, we can also consider the size of the text that completes each image, a notorious small font size that is, as a hint to look with caution (2). Historical and contemporary photographers have explored the powerful relationship between image and text achieving many effects (3). The abrupt change of interpretation provoked by Nicholas’ texts brings to mind the Rich and Poor series by Jim Goldberg, where he set out to portray various subjects in their homes and ask them to write their interpretation of the photograph next to it. As with Nicholas’ series, these images experience a deep transformation in the beholder's mind after going through the writing. 

Once the seeing-reading interplay is established, details in the photographs get noticed as the text expands with contextual information and Nicholas' thought process (4). An industrial estate that resembles any industrial estate, a tall house with prominent surrounding vegetation in the fore veiling an architectural mammoth, the empty interior of a storage container, the aforementioned Waddington playground. Images that if laid alone could pass as a collection of any suburban landscape, together and with their accompanying texts, construct the image of a subject missing in all of them: the combat drone or UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that gives the name to Nicholas’ photographic series.

Nicholas's operation relies on scattering a puzzle in a familiar landscape. Not properly hiding the pieces but integrating them into the scenery so that an act of investigation, and perhaps even espionage, must be enacted to connect all. This deceptive maneuver enables him to put forward a contrary point of view on the public perception of drone technology (5). It also furthers an insightful proposition: the pervasiveness of constant surveillance, and drone technology in the service of warfare, are expanding the battlefield. The fighting front is now everywhere. 

Sustainable war (6)

In the many directions Nicholas’ rabbit holes lead to, spread below the landscape, one finds public and private facilities and actors. UK government agencies and private companies such as Elbit, an Israelian drone parts manufacturer, or BAE Systems—who portray themselves as “one of the largest global defense companies” (7), and have a profound footprint on the UK's National Cyber Strategy (8). Pleased to meet you, in a Jaggerian fashion, war privatization. A phenomenon acting for about 30 years now (9)—perhaps we should say acting forever—and that will only become more present in the coming future.

There are many risks implied in the privatization of war. One such risk is the increment in warfare as “the political cost of military intervention” lowers, aptly noted by Chris Cole, the founder of Drone Wars UK and author of various reports on the subject. Accountability of action and a degrading differentiation between military and civil operators are two more important factors to consider according to Cole (10). War privatization is a blooming business producing abundant job posts that do not require wearing a military uniform or even leaving home for work.

Nicholas places in the center of an otherwise bucolic landscape, almost lost on the horizon, RAF Menwith Hill—USA’s National Security Agency British Base—. A place where advanced data gathering systems try to picture as accurate as possible warfare’s information environment. Gathering information has always been a vital endeavor to reduce the fog of war, in knowing in advance the enemy’s moves and getting acquainted at a distance with the battlefield. But even though contemporary frameworks such as the multi-domain battle are refined and cross-domain operations get often rehearsed, the fog of war seems to rise even more rapidly (11).

The information-scape, an immense layer suitable for a Borges tale where the map ends up covering the terrain, is incrementally composed of minuscule information bubbles gathered for a myriad of purposes. Think of social media and its controversial take on privacy, or collaborative open-source platforms like Wikipedia as part of this ever-growing scape. Indeed, all sources of data are useful in the war effort. We hold a distinguished chapter in this real-life tale for GPS technology, which serves to find the closest coffee shop, call and ride a cab, or strike a drone attack.

Drones count on information technology to render visible the terrain and the targets. But this blind reliance comes crashing down too often, more than mainstream media would like us to know (12). The prevailing discourse on accuracy, focusing debatably on transparency and accountability, even with a recognized cost of self-generated mental illness, makes those being targeted invisible by obscuring their experiences (13). To endure a drone attack, according to the Drone Survival Guide, one should take a hint and render the body invisible to keep calm and carry on (14).

The drone as anti-genius loci

Nicholas developed Predator/Protector to unveil the role of drone technology in the battlefield's expansion and how this relates to places that seem far away from the conflict zone. To do so, he links landscape photography and research information on the subject, in a reactive mix that brings into play a conceptual tactic of hiding in plain sight. In consonance with other artistic (and activist) projects that delve into drone warfare-related themes, Nicholas’ voice feels unique because of this maneuver of familiarity as a lure (15). 

Intervening familiar landscapes with contrasting textual information set a disassembling tone suitable to the elaboration of how drone technology alters the normal interplay of the targeted zones. Drones destroy communal life not only by firing missiles. Hovering over the same area for many hours end up exhausting stealth capabilities, reaffirming presence through sight and sound, thus leading to “anticipatory anxiety” (16). 

Genius-loci is a Latin expression that can be translated as the “spirit of the place”. It is often used in landscape architecture and design to guide practices that consciously account for the relational constitution of place (17). One can not construct on a void, not even if one resourced removal methods to fabricate a blank estate. Many times have such erasures translated into ecological and cultural open wounds that take time to heal if ever. In this light, drones used for surveillance and warfare can and should be regarded as one of the most perverse erasers of all.

Nicholas’ vocation as a landscape photographer shows in his motif elections and composition references. He reports having “spent time” observing and analyzing A View of Taymouth Castle on Loch Tay, by Edmund John Niemann. This is observable in the first image of RAF Menwith Hill (following the intended order in the series) as both artists place the main subject far away, almost lost on the horizon. This reference to the British landscape painting tradition, even though a little obscure, alone supports Nicholas’ intended goal of recalling familiarity to make a lure (18).

To make a landscape photograph Nicholas takes his time… looks down into the landscape through his large format viewfinder and then takes the shot after having calibrated his equipment. Perhaps we can picture Nicholas in this way, ironically mantled as a drone operator himself. Because there is an irony in being slow at making war-themed photography–given that the danger of being in a war conflict zone imprints a snappy outlook in war photojournalism. But more to the point, because in his disassembling exploration of war drones, Nicholas changes proximity to the subject thus the location of enunciation. 

With Predator/Protector images, at times we can think of ourselves as drone operators or spies. A force blended in the meadow until it jumps to catch prey. What would a predator look like hiding in a Niemann landscape painting? Or a Constable, or a Gainsborough, or a Turner just to make a point. Nicholas achieves with his photographs what a British landscape grandmaster would with paintings: taking us there, by making there here.

Antar Kuri. Montevideo, 2022

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References:

1-Zubair Rehman, his sister Nabila and his father Rafiq ur Rahman–a primary school teacher in Pakistan --appeared in 2013 before the US Congress to tell how they lost Momina Bibi, the grandmother of their family, to a drone strike in 2012. The full event can be watched here.

2- This remark refers to Nicholas’ website portfolio, where we can find the Predator/Protector full series with a text below each photo. But Nicholas’ exploratory demeanor might place the texts in a varying position elsewhere.

3- Duane Michaels is perhaps one of the most famous photographers to expand his photographs with surprising texts. A contemporary photographer investigating text and image, one closer in time to Nicholas Constant, is Kenny Bengtsson. A Swedish photographer who “chose to write texts that [describes] events surrounding the creation of the photographs”. He explains that the texts are “not part of the photographic narrative, but [serve] as forewords and afterwords.” (link accessed: August 29th 2022).

4- Some of these include hyperlinks to mainstream mediums like the BBC, the Guardian, or Independent. Perhaps the most intriguing texts are those that develop a conceptual thinking process behind the black and white photos showing an object–not a drone of course.

5-  Mainstream media portray drones as an ingenious technological achievement of accuracy, efficiency, and versatility. Most times they are publicized as luxurious items in manners that resemble sports cars and sea vessels.

6- This is a concept devised by the scriptwriters of Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 as a background context. In this sci-fi universe humanity put together an AI to come up with a sustainable strategy to counter the global economic crisis after the destruction of all paper and electronic exchange values. The plan that the AI sets in motion to reactivate the economy is perpetual war between lasting superpowers in a scenario where there are no winners or losers, just combatants.

7- 1.6k pounds sterling for BAE Systems in the UK export licences approved for military goods since 2008. Report put together by Campaign Against Arm Trade (link accessed: September 2nd 2022). The data in turn sourced from the Export Control Joint Unit of the UK Department for International Trade.

8- BAE Systems foresee an incremental “degree of join-up to ensure that strategies and outcomes are tightly integrated, particularly with the agenda to gain greater control of the UK’s digital destiny.” UK National Cyber Strategy: BAE Systems Response (link accessed: September 4th 2022)

9- The Guardian, in a 2003 article by Ian Traynor, depicts war privatization as a trend “that has been growing worldwide since the end of the cold war” (link accessed: September 20th 2022)

10- Shelling Out. UK Government Spending on Unmanned Drones. Written by Chris Cole and published by Drone Wars UK in September 2012. (link accessed: August 30th 2022).

11-  Multi-domain is a battlefield framework evolved from AirLand Battle doctrine–close coordination between land forces and air forces–active from 1982 into the late 1990s. Multi-domain now accounts for a full electromagnetic spectrum of the battlefield, enemy hacking capabilities, and integrates the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Space Force (cyberspace). (link accessed: September 27th 2022).

12- The Drone Crash database reports an assortment of accidental causes for a drone crash like engine and electricity failures, and pilot errors. It goes back to 2007. Last updated: 19 July 2022. (link accessed: August 30th 2022).

13-  Rambo, a fictional US Vietnam war combatant that had a hard time detaching from the battlefield, popularized Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in mainstream media. PTSD, or Shellshock in Rambo days, is today a buzzword, besides being a mental health condition, when applied to war drone operators. According to Alex Edney-Browne, author of Embodiment and Affect in a Digital Age. Understanding Mental Illness among Military Drone Personnel (read it here), “To give voice to the perpetrator of violence (particularly state-sanctioned violence) can reinforce their power in knowledge production, and can offer legitimacy to their actions. It can also draw attention away from the victims of violence”.

14-  You could use a space blanket (emergency blanket) to conceal your body temperature and become invisible at night to warfare drones equipped with heat vision. Read about it in the Drone Survival Guide (here).

15- Nicholas finds an echoing voice in the work of fellow photographer Lisa Barnard, who also points out toward the battlefield transformation in her work Whiplash Transition (2010–2013).

16- Anticipatory anxiety is “a psychological phenomenon that causes people to worry constantly about their immediate future”. Impact of Drones in Battlefield. Commodore BR Prakash VSM (Indian Navy, Retired). 2021. (link accessed: September 21, 2022)

17- Jeff Malpas, an Australian philosopher and author of more than 20 books on topics in philosophy, art, architecture, and geography, thinks of place as “a complex but unitary structure that encompasses self and other, space and time, subjectivity and objectivity.”

18- Edmund John Niemann is not often cited as a representative of the British landscape tradition, but his compositions clearly show an influence over Nicholas' works. An interesting contrary reference to Nicholas work (and career path milestones) can be found in Paul Nash and his still life-landscape painting Totes Meer, where Paul depicted a Nazi crashed airplane wrecking yard as a seascape under a moonlight. As we know from his bio and artist statement, Nicholas wanted to be a landscape photographer and war photojournalist, and chose not to set foot in the conflict zone. Paul wanted to be a landscape painter and ended up being an official war painter who set foot on the conflict zone of both world wars.

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Nicholas Constant is an internationally raised, London based artist with an interest in the spectacle of modern warfare. Particularly in the indirect effects -or invisible aspects- of war, how they surface in everyday life and how these issues are dealt with outside of mainstream media. He uses an unintrusive perspective - through the use of landscapes and contexts- to make invisible subjects visible, almost mimicking romantic paintings, their sense of passive beauty of nature, as both contrast and lure.