Military Service

by Louis Cheng / 20/05/2021

My military service was an excruciatingly boring experience and certainly the most absurd thing I have ever been asked to do. In a place where appearances matter more than reality, we were told to sit down and do nothing in order to appear like we were doing something in case superior officers were close by. We were taught ridiculous things that we would never use during war, using the most idiotic and inefficient ways. It was comical and tragic at the same time. My time, which I valued so much outside, was worth nothing to them and our days, so strictly organised, were filled with dullness and boredom. It’s this uneventfulness and repetitiveness that altered our sense of time. Inside felt like a world apart, like a bad dream on loop all night.

My photos try to reflect the attitude of self-deprecation that I developed to cope with the absurdity of the place. Only through derision could the ridiculous things that we were asked to do in complete seriousness become more acceptable. Joking about it made time pass quicker and provided purpose when there wasn’t any.

We spent four months pretending to be soldiers, dressing up in military uniforms and holding guns but not doing much with them. Dressing up in the morning felt a bit like being an actor, putting on a costume and grabbing his props before coming on stage. In some pictures, the unity of the military uniform is subverted by removing pants, shirts or shoes from the outfit. This is meant to reduce the military uniform to merely pieces of clothing and thus removing them of their symbolic power.

Most of the pictures were taken with flash, making the light obscure the surroundings, and my subject look unnatural. This creates a surrealist atmosphere, where my subject looks like they are trapped inside the bad dream I mentioned earlier, which they know is fake, but most go through with anyway.

These photos go exactly against how my superiors, who worry so much about appearances, would want their troops to be perceived, and this is exactly my intent.