There is no conventional plate section in A Heavy Reckoning. Instead, images which represent the significant themes of the book are compiled into a photo-essay, accompanied by short phrases matched to the text. The visuals have been drawn from the work of David Cotterrell and Rupert Frere.
David Cotterrell is an installation artist working across media and technologies to explore the social and political tendencies of a world at once shared and divided. In 2007, he went to Afghanistan on a war artist commission from Wellcome Collection, undertaking a residency with the Joint Forces Medical Group in Helmand Province. When he returned he sought to develop work that responded to the extraordinary experience of witnessing individuals striving to support others to maintain an elite level of health, while preparing for the possibility of treating them again for the most profound threats to their mental and physical survival. David’s subsequent work Theatre was the centerpiece of the War and Medicine exhibition held at Wellcome Collection in 2008.
Staff Sergeant Rupert Frere is a British Army Photographer. The Army’s photographic branch is responsible for all photography in the Army. Wherever the Army is on operational duties a photographer accompanies them to provide images for the Defence Imagery Archive, for release to the press, or for intelligence purposes. Rupert first deployed to Helmand in 2009 as part of a combat camera team. He went for a second tour in 2010 as the Task Force Helmand photographer with 16 Air Assault Brigade. Rupert describes the difference between a war photographer and an army photographer thus: army photographers carry a weapons system as well as a camera. On occasion they make a choice between capturing the action or becoming part of it. Sometimes they do both.
Photo credits
David Cotterrell: 1, 6 (bottom); Rupert Frere: 2 top), 2 (bottom), 3 (top), 3 (bottom), 4 (top), 4 (bottom), 5, 6 (top), 7 (top), 7 (bottom), 8 (bottom); Mark Ormrod: 8 (top left); Scott Meenagh: 8 (top right).