Jason Koxvold’s new photo book, Engage and Destroy, is a typological survey of soldiers before and after their seven-month training and a rare insight into the military’s human production line
The first question is for Efrem: why did you edit a book about black-and-white photography?
Efrem Zelony-Mindell: Iâm not sure it was all that complicated when this all began, by which I mean, there wasnât a huge conceptual basis when I first started collecting images for
Primal Sight. It was in 2016 that I first started noticing black-and-white images that felt very much like they were breaking out of a canonical and modernist lens that has come to be so expected of black-and-white photography. These pictures felt. wrong, upside down, inside out, backwards. That also just so happens to be a list of my six favorite words.
LIKE explores the experiences and relationships of migrant workers in Oman. But rather than focusing on the defining public image of poor working conditions, photographer Ryan Debolski depicts men finding agency and connection to the landscape of the beach and companionship in each other they are as playful as they are introspective. A running dialogue of conversations via text message weaves together details of infrastructure and landscape and highlights the men’s digital communications with one another.
LIKE refuses to dehumanize or mystify the laborer, and an accompanying essay by Jason Koxvold, “Raw Material: Capital and Exploitation at the Neoliberal Frontier