Untitled (#556), from Suicide Bomb Series

Los Angeles-based artist Dusty Herbig explores issues of population expansion and its close relationship to violent conflict. In Herbig's view, increasing competition for land, water, food, fossil fuels, and other scare resources are a major cause of the world's disputes. He examines these issues through systems of counting, statistics, and the cataloguing of conflicts, often using violent and militaristic imagery to evoke feelings of fear. In this powerful series of prints, Herbig warns of the dangers of conflict with photographic images of the aftermath of suicide bombings. Each terrorist attack is numbered, as if routine. Hands, the tools of destruction, reach across blood-spattered surfaces. It is a wake-up call.