Plate 23 from ‘The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra): ‘The Same Elsewhere.’ (Lo mismo en otras partes.)

Description

The dead lie heaped beneath a dark overhang in The Same Elsewhere. The enclosing shadow gives the gathered bodies a desolate setting, while the title extends the scene toward further places beyond the frame. Goya makes one particular aftermath of violence suggest a wider pattern without allowing its human cost to become abstract.

Goya’s etching, drypoint and burin turn that broad implication into a closely worked print. Its meaning depends on the relationship between repetition and individual experience: even when the same thing happens elsewhere, each occurrence has its own human cost. The image’s force lies in this balance, allowing a compact scene to question the ease with which repeated violence can begin to seem ordinary.

Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Goya collection.