Turner-prize winner’s true portrait of war

 

General Photography

“It is an image of war that the [British] Ministry of Defence (MoD) never wanted to see published: an intimate family photograph of a British soldier killed in Iraq which, taken with nearly 100 others, forms the official portrait of the conflict by the Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen. As the finished work, For Queen and Country, was unveiled in Manchester last night, McQueen said it had been completed in the face of two years’ opposition from the MoD, which had offered only a limited glimpse of the conflict, refused him access to the families of British casualties and asked why he could not produce ‘a landscape’ portrait instead.” - story (also see this story)