A View of My World shows the previously unpublished image file consisting of 23 digital photographs taken on 10 August 2003 in the Al Jami’ah neighbourhood in Baghdad, near the Mansoor district. The photographs were originally published on the Flickr account of an American soldier, who is represented here anonymously, as a fake character, by the fictional persona Karen Wilson.
A View of My World is part of an image archive based on photographs appropriated by Thomas Galler from 2001-2016 through image hosting sites such as Flickr, Panoramio, Imgur and Photobucket. The collection relates to the period of the unlawful invasion, deployment, occupation and military intervention of the United States Armed Forces and the United Kingdom Armed Forces in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003-2011), as well as the war in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001-2021) by ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). In 2017, edition fink, Zurich, published the extensive artist’s book Palm Trees, Sunsets, Turmoil by Thomas Galler, which is also based on this collection.
Karen Wilson’s A View of My World once again opens up a new context. Her fictional narrative is reflected in the documentary photographs, which are edited in a page-spanning layout. The resulting interfaces are emblematic of difference and the fragmentary, in which text and image enter into an ambivalent relationship. Karen Wilson takes us back to 2003, back to a story of fact and fiction.