‘The Casualties Union act out injuries for hospitals, emergency services – and police preparing for suicide attacks. Their work requires precision performance’
This was my first project after my 20-year collaboration with Adam Broomberg came to a close in 2021. I had never really worked as an artist or a photographer on my own, but I think we both needed to see what it felt like. Our photos had been highly conceptual, and I wanted to return to why I first became a photographer: going out into the world with a feeling of wonder, watching and having experiences with strangers. So that’s what I spent 2022 doing: meeting pensioner groups, carnival troupes, gender activists and, as this image shows, attending a meeting of the Casualties Union, who were perfecting wound makeup.
The Casualties Union, a group of volunteers that has been operational since the second world war, is used by hospitals, the emergency services and even corporate clients, to test out catastrophe scenarios. If the police were staging a hypothetical suicide attack in London, they would need casualties that not only looked like the real thing but acted like the real thing. There’s a lot of performance required, and real precision about the way the volunteers act out injuries.
