Text by Aidan Sullivan, Alvaro Ybarra Zavala.
Published by Turner
A journey through the darker reaches of humankind, Apocalypsis is a record of loss, grief, injustice, violence and death through war in Iraq, the Congo, Darfur, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma. Photographer Alvaro Ybarra Zavala aims to bring the realities of these regions into our daily lives, and to confront us with what he describes as “the orgy of desperation, blood and despair which human beings are capable of inflicting upon their fellows”; he undertakes to record these darker episodes in our recent history to show that they are omnipresent realities. “People are moved by what they see,” writes Zavala. “They respond emotionally, intellectually and morally. All we have is each other. We create our own problems, and it is up to us to solve them. I want this project to become a part of our visual history, to enter our collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to remind us that history's deepest tragedies concern not the great leaders who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury.”
