Today’s post is only indirectly relevant to non-photorealism… but this piece by Elliot Burns is a poignant illustration of how the imperfections of manual repetitions can take on their own meaning. The above image represents the first 5 lines of Rupert Brooke’s poem The Soldier written over itself 350 times, once for each British soldier killed in Afghanistan (as of 28/01/2011) – the original literal meaning is buried beneath an appealing visual texture. One is a catastrophe, one thousand is a statistic…

I’m not sure what I think about using such a patriotic, empire-adorning poem, but it certainly doesn’t reduce the work’s power.