Pity, sex and sacrifice: photography of the moral abyss by Brian Vu

[W]e first found Brian Vu when we encountered his psychedelic photography last year, the powerful manipulations of colour and pattern found order within disorder and established the New York-based photographer with a compelling set of codes, conventions and visual language.

His new series Spirit Power Song is an arresting continuation of his past work that lenses the human psyche with sacred symbolism and digital abstractions. Keeping his signature pallet of red and blue, Vu navigates the perceptions of morality which charge and inevitably, destruct our relationships. His work asks us how well can we truly know another person, and really, how well can we know ourselves?

Photographed in the autumn of 2016, and then in the winter of 2017 at the collapse of his personal relationships, Spirit Power Song is one of his most personal bodies of work yet. Using television screens to stitch together fragments of memory, language and nature, it’s a dark and unsettling representation of what we choose to remember and even more troubling to consider what we choose to forget.

Take a look at the series below and follow him on Instagram @brianvu.