Spiritual Warfare

Process Diary

The screen behind them says QUICK SHOT and keeps the score at zero, which is the funniest and truest thing in the frame. Two lamps did all of it — magenta on one side, violet-blue on the other — and nothing else lit the room, so the whole image is decided by which side of the body the light was allowed to touch. The gun is held across the chest the way you hold something you are not planning to use, which is what makes the pose read as devotion instead of threat. I pushed the blacks down until the background stopped being a room and became the space the game is played in. Everything in the picture is a machine and the only still thing is the person standing in front of it, waiting for their turn. That is the warfare: the machines keep counting and you keep standing there anyway.