“The visual language of war, violence, and terror has been directly yoked to technological innovations that mirror and propel mass media and its funhouse-mirror twin, propaganda. While this has historically been the case, the increasing speed of technological innovation has rendered porous the boundaries between targeting enemies, documentation or bearing witness of damage, and guilty pleasure. Can the bursting of bombs be enjoyed without collateral damage? Sean Foulkes’s Fragments of Engagement brings us directly into this line of questioning. Do you love the smell of napalm in the morning? Or do you just enjoy the Francis Ford Coppola-esque celluloid evocation of it?

Foulkes pulls us all into a shared moral quandary, offering a reflection on the surreal and slippery nature of mediated violence. Ultimately, tragically, we are reminded of the incommunicability of the first-hand experience of war—we see it, we recognize it, and consume it almost unthinkingly. It is both—as is Foulkes’s work—the making and unmaking of the world.”      -full text-

Lesley A. Martin, Aperture Magazine