Brian McCarty's photostream

November 3rd, 2011

CNN.com will soon be posting a portfolio of photographs from my first trip to the Middle East. I'm flattered that the series was chosen to be one of the inaugural posts on their soon-to-launch photography blog.

For now, you can see an interview on CNN.com about the project.

With the photos releasing soon, I thought you'd enjoy a look at one that I feel very strongly about. The above drawing was created by a little boy under the care of the Ibdaa Cultural Center inside the Dheisheh Refugee Camp. I used the drawing as literal art direction for the subsequent photo of locally bought toys staged alongside the West Bank barrier wall.

This photo/drawing pair will be exhibited alongside other work from WAR-TOYS by the South African foundation Freedom to Create. Remarkable humanitarian and women's rights advocate Graça Machel will be opening the exhibition in Cape Town on November 17th.

In addition to selecting work for the touring exhibition, Freedom to Create also commended WAR-TOYS and shortlisted it for their annual grant prize competition. I'm truly humbled to be alongside so many creatives doing such brilliant and impactful work. Included are artists such as Ai Wei Wei and journalists such as Roxana Saberi.

A special, limited edition of 50 folios was created to help fundraise for the continued production of the WAR-TOYS project. Each folio contains six, 8x10 prints: three toy photographs from the initial month-long trip to the Middle East and the three corresponding children's drawings that each were based upon.

Conceived and built by fellow artist and Grammy-award-winning package designer Hugh Brown, the folios are housed in surplus, French military medical kits, specially repurposed. Each one is unique, inside and out. Their heavy steel cases have been filled with pieces of 7200 plastic army men, suspended in resin to form shelves for the archival prints. Each print from the edition of 50 is signed and numbered on the back. Each folio case is numbered with an engraved metal plate and includes a Certificate of Authenticity.