This picture of abject annihilation portrays the horror of war through an absence of human life and an eerie, dust-covered setting. Still more unsettling is the realization that the room with its throne-like chair is actually a doll-sized model magnified dramatically by the photograph. The scene is a handmade reconstruction of one of the many media images that document the destruction caused by the decade-long war in Iraq.

Wafaa Bilal, an associate arts professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991. He is known internationally for his provocative performance pieces and interactive works. In the series Ashes, to which this photograph belongs, the ashes covering the models include human remains. The powerful photographs capture and reflect Bilal’s own reactions to the war as an exiled Iraqi who experienced the devastation of his home not merely through media imagery but through the deaths of his father and brother.