Jennifer Karady calls photographs like this one “staged narrative tableau paintings.” Created through a residency at Buffalo’s CEPA Gallery, this work is part of a series that explores both the nature of memory and the often challenging relationship between art and war. Karady spent many hours with a number of Western New York veterans, interviewing them about their experiences abroad and their lives after returning home. Each image was reached through a collaborative effort, with Karady and her subject deciding together which memory the work would focus on and how best to re-create it, metaphorically. The images are, in some ways, surreal representations of how returning veterans live in two worlds—physically they are home in the United States, but parts of their minds remain focused on the war zone. Each photograph is accompanied by a statement that summarizes Karady’s extensive conversation with the veteran and provides information about his or her current occupation.

Label from Looking Out and Looking In: A Selection of Contemporary Photography, January 19–June 9, 2013