The Time War

Photography collection, fiction, card game

A mix photography and science fiction, warping what is normally a documentary medium through the story’s lens. The idea itself is campy, violent, and insistent so it can be diluted in combination with the images.

The Present is at war with the Past. History is inflicted upon them because these events were necessary for the Present to exist.

The Present is also in open rebellion against the Future. Inseparable from their concept of free will, the Present sees the Future as alien.

Museums are the primary source of imagery for this concept. The historical artifacts and visuals combine with the surreal environment created to display them. Through abstraction this provides great visual metaphors for time.

Statues and paintings are frozen projections of the Past into the Present, but are the viewers from the Present? Or are they shades of Future agents moving through a pinned Present.

Time War

A training exercise played between two foot soldiers recruited in the time war on the side of good.

The game's exact origin and creators were lost along its retelling. Simplified, comedic, or reverent copies proliferate for as many reasons as there are recruitment points across space and time.

Where were you and your compatriot recruited? Take turns adding details, two each.

Where is your deployment exercise?

Name a specific location, some place in the past relative to your recruitment point.

Then, shuffle the deck and deal one card face up as the starting marker on the timeline. Make sure to be clear about the timeline extending left or right from the first marker.

What are your assignments?

Secretly record your target value the marker. Think about what this value means, are you bringing the location into a golden era, a dark age, or an apocalypse?

Now, whoever named the exercise location plays the adversary, a foot soldier of the evil repugnant Enemy. The other player operates as a valiant soldier of Justice.

Starting with the despised adversary, take turns drawing (x) cards.

Then, choose one to play onto the timeline, placing it to the left or right depending on which direction was previously established. The value of the card (1-13) can either be added or subtracted from a single marker. Red numbers subtract while black numbers add.

Repeat until all cards have been played or discarded. Then, resolve the timeline starting from the starting marker. To resolve the timeline, take turns declaring what each card has done to the location, name your deviation and describe its impact. Famine? Flood? The flap of a butterfly’s wing?

Pick a marker and add or subtract the value of the card. Continue resolving until the timeline has solidified.

Reveal your assignments. Record the difference between the final marker state of the location and your assignment marker. Congratulations. Whoever has the lower difference has won the exercise.

The true Time War is complex and patient. Continuing playing, training, repeating the rituals until you are needed.

Selected images from the Time War series.