Laurie says:

I just put Pokemon Go on my phone and I’m finding it unexpectedly charming and delightful. The whole world is playing it, children and adults alike.

Then I saw these images by Syrian artist Khaled Akil and knew I needed to put them up now.
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What one sees when looking into Akil’s images is a dual universe wherein creatures and symbols merge with the visual fragments of war and abandonment. His work is a hybrid of photography and painting, with a digital final product, various layers, created in direct relation with the photographic work and the issue presented. Khaled Akil subjects his original photographs to countless layers of manual intervention that ultimately result in digital prints. With their mixture of photography, painting, and sometimes Arabic calligraphy, the dense surfaces of the works make them expressive and strongly palpable. Wikipedia
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A Syrian boy walks with his bicycle in the devastated Sukari district in the northern city of Aleppo on November 13, 2014, after more than three years of fighting and shelling. Syrians are increasingly unable to escape their country’s war as tougher policies in potential host nations are preventing them from taking refuge in the region and beyond.

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These photographic creations of Khaled Akil, juxtaposing the devastation, Pokemon Go characters and the children playing in the ruins, are not simply “powerful or moving.” We are acclimatized in these times to distance ourselves from the constant images of devastation and despair. His images pierce our defensive numbness and put us into the realities we try so hard to avoid.