ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a reflection on the author's art practice and research into Fijian military embodiment and the ways that Fijian soldiers and private security workers negotiate a liminal space between embodied indigenous knowledge and somaesthetic military practice. It discusses the work of two visual artists who address the dynamics of presence and absence and the embodied soldier through their photographic work. Lisa Barnard is a UK-based photographic artist and academic at the University of South Wales. In her typology of the ordinary, the sense of homesickness is palpable and, though visually absent, the soldiers become "vicariously visible". Suzanne Opton is a US-based photographic artist and teacher at the International Center of Photography in New York. The soldiers in Suzanne Opton's photographic portraits confront the gaze of the onlooker to make direct eye contact with the viewer. Her images draw us in to consider what these soldiers have seen and to imagine what they have witnessed.
