Geoff Young Gallery, August 2009

For the filming of Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick had 200 Spanish potted palms flown in to Britain, to simulate Vietnam. The results were somewhat less than convincing.

To create Beckton/Hue (the title indicates the actual location in England where the scene was shot, along with the Vietnamese city Kubrick intended to recreate), I stop-framed the DVD and, using an extreme close-up lens, focused in on one of the typically anemic Spanish palms. At the base of the tree can be seen a shadowy curved form, which may be the actual rim of the pot that contains the palm. I then digitally enhanced the image, principally by increasing the saturation of the original colors. The final photographic image simultaneously suggests the ravages of war as well as the artifice involved in the creation of a work of art (both Kubrick’s and this one).

The photo was mounted on a piece of honeycombed aluminum, a material used in the construction of military aircraft. On the backside of the panel is mounted a trompe-l’oeil, digitally-created texture map, marked by corrosion and bullet holes, which goes by the name Vietnam. 

Interestingly, both of the images for this piece were printed by the same lab that printed the photos shot by Matthew Modine during the making of Full Metal Jacket, which Modine later published in the book Full Metal Jacket Diary.