The Brisbane Powerhouse is showing the work of Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin in an exhibition about suffering, war and death. Entitled As I Was Dying it covers some of the great upheavals of recent times, including Darfur, Lebanon, Iraq, and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

Pellegrin's photographs are historical snapshots (witness to history?) that have a poetic quality. Many of his images are blurred, appearing almost unfinished.The photos are often grainy, impressionistic images of figures under dark, threatening skies, which elicit a direct emotional response.

Light features very strongly in Pellegrin’s work with a great deal of use of silhouetted and near-silhouette figures in his black and white. Pellegrin says:

I work a lot in low light so there are technical reasons for this. But there are also artistic motives. I see photography as a bridge between the subject and the viewer – like a hand that comes out, or the beginning of a conversation. I like leaving something unsaid so that the viewer can fill in the missing piece .... I think it works on a more symbolic level than can be achieved with colour. It allows pictures to carry greater meaning. A colour photo of refugees in Sudan shows what happened the day I was there. In black and white, I think the same photo has the capacity to be more than that – to speak about the condition of refugees at large.

He also makes use of techniques such as deliberate misframing, blur and tilted views to give a feeling of emergency and immediacy to his pictures. Often large areas of the image are black or nearly so, the photographer clearly seeking out scenes with both low and highly uneven light. Pellegrin says:

When I do my work and I am exposed to the suffering of others - their loss or, at times their death I feel I am serving as a witness; that is my role and responsibility to create a record for our collective memory. Part of this, I believe, has to do with notions of accountability. Perhaps it is only in their moment of suffering that these people will be noticed, and noticing erases our excuse of saying one day that we did not know. But I also feel that it is in this very delicate and fragile space that surrounds death, the space that I sometimes have both the privilege and the burden of entering, there exists the possibility of an encounter with the other in a way that goes beyond words and culture and differences. It is about being exposed for a moment in front of each other and in front of the act and mystery of dying. In that moment I feel I am looking at something that I can’t completely see but that is looking at me. It is in this exchange that something simultaneously universal and deeply intimate can be found; in the death of the other there is a loss that belongs to everyone.