Alexander Iezzi began collecting books of war photography as a teenager. “I was kind of obsessed with them, studying their images over and over,” he recalls. He was struck by how the endless repetition of certain types of images, whether from World War II, Vietnam, or even the Gulf War, seemed to reflect an inability on the part of humanity to learn from history. After Iezzi’s older brother returned from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan several years ago, the artist started removing specific photo-reproductions from these books (as well as magazines like Life) and drawing on them with gouache and ink. “I wanted to respond to them in some way,” he says. “The idea was to tell the story of a mind going to war.”

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