Past Forward #23

Drawing from the history of last century’s traumas, Past Forward confronts us with the cyclical nature of humanity’s darkest moments. The difficult episodes from this past are too frequent and immense for any person to fully fathom, so we rely on the best efforts of documentation as a proxy for the lived experiences. The power of these snippets – the relatively few, inescapable images we now recognize of poverty, war, disaster, and persecution – have become icons of life’s horrors, seared into our collective memory. We digest these summations and visual reportage as temporary reminders that we still have so much healing to do.

Past Forward is a post photographic series of historical fiction artworks that challenges us to confront the uncomfortable truths of our shared history, and simultaneously recognize the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity. The imagery conveys the innocence of human vulnerability through depictions of misery, neglect, cruelty, and the weight of societal injustices. The depictions of these subjects through generative art making processes are a reminder of the infinite difficult moments that will never be remembered, yet exist to learn from.

Through this series, Wubbushi creates works that transcend the traditional boundaries of photography as a medium and documentation as a practice. Each piece suspends a hypothetical moment that never happened – but could have – to create space for reflection and empathy for all the experiences we are fortunate not to live ourselves.

This deeply troubling imagery unearths echoes of historical traumas that reverberate through our world today. By accentuating the inability to capture the full truth of trauma in an image, these artworks convey the difficult essence of what we pray to someday avoid forever.