It’s probably safe to say that artist/photographer Brian McCarty is obsessed with toys. I became aware of him via a photographer friend who sang his praises and I’m officially a fan. The bio on his website describes him and his work thusly…
His work fuses reality and hyperreality through the personification and pantomime of toy characters, integrated into real settings through the use of forced perspective. Serving as both subject and surrogate, the arranged actions of toys are presented as authentic. Through the camera, McCarty creates and captures actual, although completely artificial moments in time. This artful play is used by McCarty to deconstruct and explore wide-ranging themes from family roles to consumerism, war to individual and cultural identity.
I’m too dumb to understand what all that really means, but ANYWAY … McCarty has a new project that I find kind of neat and fascinating: “War Toys,” a documentary film that follows the photographer as he travels through the Middle East photographing children playing with toys. A trailer for the project on Vimeo explains that it “explores firsthand accounts of war from the perspective of children living in its day-to-day reality,” and “focuses on the latest generation of Israelis and Palestinians that has never known an existence without the constant threat of rocket attacks, air strikes, gunfire, explosions, and incursions.”
In other words, the film will tell the stories of life inside war-torn parts of the world though children playing with their toys, though you’ll probably only be able to see it at arthouse theaters that serve wine. Anyway, the trailer, which is quite beautiful, is after the jump.