Shay Arick

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Part of a series of videos called LIFE, where Shay Arik videos that re-enact iconic journalistic photographs. As explained by the video’s title, the departure point for LIFE #1 is the iconic 1943 photograph published by Life magazine that captures Japanese officer Yasuno Chikao from the Imperial Japanese Navy as he raises his sword, seconds before publically beheading Australian war commando Leonard Siffleet in the shores of Papua New Guinea. In Arick’s restaging there are no onlookers in the scene, the only two figures represented are Chikao and Siffleet: the perpetrator and victim of this fatal act of violence.