The fundamentals of warfare are changing in the United States.

Pilots, sitting in a shipping container in Nevada, are waging war all over the world using drones that can stay in the air for days at a time. Their bombs represent an increasingly significant part of the United States global war on terror, and it’s being done largely in secret.  

The details and reasonings for these strikes are classified, kept away from the scrutiny of the media.

Tomas van Houtryve wanted to find a way to visualize this war.

“If we don't ever see who are victims are, then that empathy never kicks in.

I want there to be a permanent visual record of the dawn of the drone age, the period in American history when America started outsourcing their military to flying robots,” said van Houtryve.  

In order to create this record, van Houtryve sent his own drone into American skies.

“I decided to attach my camera to a small drone and travel across America to photograph the very sorts of gatherings mentioned in strike reports from Pakistan and Yemen - weddings, funerals, groups of people praying or exercising.

By creating these images, I aim to draw attention to the changing nature of personal privacy, surveillance, and contemporary warfare,” said van Houtryve.

Blue Sky Days was created with the support of: Harper’s Magazine, the Pulitzer Center, TIME Magazine, the Getty Images Grant, the Aaron Siskind Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the ACLU and National Geographic.

The film needed to accurately describe the often complex world of US drone strikes abroad, while detailing the nature and intent of Tomas Van Houtryve’s artistic intentions and origins.

Van Houtryve’s stunning and thoughtful work was based around the single image and it’s relationship to a caption that connected the photograph to US drone strikes abroad. Because of this, the body of work is small in terms of the amount of images that are often needed to visualize a film based on photographs.

Editor and producer, Tim McLaughlin, used editorial, historical and stock footage to visualize Van Houtryve’s artistic intentions and journalistic findings related to drone strikes.

The films were shown on April 30, 2015 at the 2015 International Center of Photography’s Infinity Awards in New York and launched online on May 1, 2015.

This film was a collaboration with Harbers Studio and the International Center of Photography.

Harbers Studios turbocharges the efforts of charitable entrepreneurs by helping them tell their stories. Our goal is to help them articulate and share the value of the work they do so they can inspire others to help them do it. Working with some of the best filmmaking talent in the world, we create compelling visual narratives that enhance the endeavors of organizations working to make the world a better place.

The International Center of Photography (ICP) is the world’s leading institution dedicated to the practice and understanding of photography and the reproduced image in all its forms. Through our exhibitions, educational programs, and community outreach, we offer an open forum for dialogue about the role images play in our culture. Since our founding, we have presented more than 500 exhibitions and offered thousands of classes, providing instruction at every level. ICP is a center where photographers and artists, students and scholars can create and interpret the world of the image within our comprehensive educational facilities and archive.

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Since 1985, the International Center of Photography has recognized outstanding achievements in photography with its prestigious Infinity Awards. The awards ceremony is also ICP’s primary fundraising benefit, with its revenues assisting the center's various programs.

Harbers Studios commissioned MediaStorm, on behalf of ICP, to create a short film about each of the recipients to screen at the awards ceremony and to display online. The films pay tribute to the contributions of each artist to the craft and field of photography and demonstrate ICP's commitment to them.