Lance Corporal M, after Afghanistan

Ben Quilty was deployed to Afghanistan in October 2011 as an official war artist as part of Operation Slipper, commissioned by the Australian War Memorial and attached to the Australian Defence Force. During this time he observed the Australians’ activities in Kabul, Kandahar, and Tarin Kot. His task was to record and interpret the experiences of Australian service personnel. Quilty spent more than three weeks talking to serving men and women about their service.

As part of his initial idea for the commission, Quilty photographed soldiers in Afghanistan in the same pose. He asked each of them to face the sun with their eyes closed, then open them and stare into the blinding light, at which point he would take the photograph. As he explained, "To me, this symbolises what they're facing, something immense, overwhelming." After returning to Australia, Quilty began making portraits from these photographs. After painting several portraits, Quilty found that they failed to capture the experience of sitting with the soldiers, talking with them, and making drawings of them. He found that his reliance on photographs was limiting his ability to fully articulate the soldiers' experiences and emotions. Instead Quilty wanted to create portraits from live sittings, so he asked some of the soldiers he had met to come to his studio in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

When the soldiers arrived at his studio, Quilty suggested that they sit for their portraits naked. He was not interested in creating a traditional heroic male nude, a style that had often attributed semi-divine status to the sitter. Instead, he wanted to capture the sheer physicality and presence of these men and women. Quilty needed to see the skin, the body, removed from its protective layers of uniform and body armour. As he put it, “I wanted [this soldier] to be naked, showing not only his physical strength but also the frailty of human skin and the darkness of the emotional weight of the war.” Lance Corporal M, after Afghanistan (2012) displays both the vigour of the fit Australian soldier and the fragility of his naked body. He lies supine, his head thrust back as if he has fallen in battle.

Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by Ben Quilty.