Cory Zimmerman

Ongoing Works

War Photography As Fine Art

2026

Can The Bridge Be Built?

Will The Bridgetenders Allow It?

Or Will The “Art” In The Artifact Remain Fiction?

Is Reality Just Too Difficult To See?

Or Too Difficult To Sell?

They Sell War Everyday On TV.

Market Take Note.

Select Monographs

Slaves Are Not Allowed Into Paradise

2026

May. Morning. Ukraine. I am only one of countless many who have sat in this Ukrainian hotel bar waiting on a fixer with a sore back and a persistent sense of uncertainty, grasping at ghosts of motivations floating about the back of a scattered, underslept mind. The young waitress is live wire. Name: Mira. Back in Mexico, it means “to see.” Here: Peace. To come of age in a war zone while trembling with life in direct periphery to death. Where peace is seen between death like clockwork. And the siren blares again. And no one flinches.

May. Noon. Ukraine. The "boom" of mortars is a sensory shock that stays in your bones, especially when contrasted with the sterile, futuristic drone of a fleet of Iranian Shaheds. In a moment's time, one can witness the entire lifecycle of this conflict: the high-tech sensors of a robotic arm and the "dumb" iron of a mortar shell smacking the earth. The "mind-machine" disconnect of seeing amputees control robotic limbs with their thoughts while struggling to control your own racing mind is a jarring irony. The cognitive dissonance is the struggle to make a machine move, with that to make the mind quiet and still. It’s no wonder I feel "weird" and "sub-par"—I am watching humans be rebuilt while I feel like I'm being worn down by the scent of coal and diesel. The bar of usability for the work I am creating, I can see the "connective tissue" of war. However, I worry I have missed the heart of the story, as my own heart never drops below 110 beats per minute between and beneath the sky-scorching roar of missiles flying overhead, a sound more akin to God tearing open the heavens than to the inevitable hell that reigns down upon this land and its people.

May. Early Evening. Ukraine. I can hear children playing outside even though it's late and half past dark. Everything sounds so normal that one might almost forget the war. I hope the air-raid sirens stay silent for now, as I'm certain the kids have been instructed to flee inside the second they sound. But for this brief moment of normalcy, of sanity, these kids will never know how much the echo of their laughter and the sound of shoes chasing one another across the pavement four stories below ease the city streets. As for the tension in my chest, the only thump I hear is a basketball, and the roar of a distant motorcyclist taking in the cool spring breeze. Everything sounds so damn normal on this beautiful evening in Dnipro City. So normal that I fear my own words, and I shall cut them short. To forget is to lose sight of the truth — a truth so distant from an entire waking world, far beyond the western horizon. As for the eastern front, chaos twiddles its thumbs, waiting for the moment, the very moment it believes the war has gone forgotten just long enough.

May. Night. Ukraine. There are explosions all around my hotel, but I want to share a poem by Volodymyr Vakulenko before I go to the shelter, as in the shelter I will be unable to see or hear.

Storks bring burned letters,
Stork post over the ash and ruins...
Wait for me, sun, wait in my dreams—
Whom will you meet at the dawn:
Primroses disheveled somewhere on treasures,
Or maybe a shattered, split stone?
Chechnya, Dagestan, Crimea, Karabakh,
And Kyiv in the bosom of its wounds.
A soul red hot with pain in the sky
Folds a burnt letter…
The storks fly. The day lay unbound
In the expanse of tears. Shots were fired.

The poem was found beneath the Cherry Tree after his death.

It is now five days past the end of the ceasefire. The war rages on, intensified.

I lay awake on the bathroom floor.

Goodnight.

The Distance Between Mountains & Memory

2025

To the Tzeltal people, to look toward the New Year is to aspire to the mountain's peak. Living in this vertical world, the reality of time is carved into the earth: the past forms the foundation upon which one stands, and the future is a destination to be ascended. The Chiapas highlands move through time alongside the growth of corn; as the seasonal cycle turns, the heavy burden of generations—both the governed and the governors—merges into a singular, circular rhythm of life. In these highlands, the landscape is not merely a backdrop for Mayan history, but the physical embodiment of time itself—layered, recurring, and forever uphill.

The Mesoamerican mountains—volcanic peaks, valleys, and cloud forests stretching from the Valley of Mexico to the Mayan Highlands—form a landscape deeply intertwined with memory, specifically for the Tzotzil-Maya communities near San Cristóbal, Chamula, Zinacantán, and beyond. From this cultural center, the project explores how the physical characteristics of the terrain—fields, slopes, and village streets—shape community perceptions and narratives over the passage of time.

I view form as a living interface: a photograph functions as a deliberate boundary that can both reveal and conceal, capturing a moment frozen in time while inviting a broader understanding of temporality. In this way, each frame becomes a site where the local is made legible through light, gesture, and material culture—the pattern of weavings on a loom, the curve of a laboring hand, the architecture of wood and stone, and the distance between mountains and memory. The project unfolds through a dialogue that emphasizes time as a constructed yet living dimension. The work challenges linear narratives of tradition and change, instead proposing a continuum where landscape, language, and people shape meaning across generations. Form, time, and space are not external entities to be captured, but co-creators of perception—each frame contributing to a collective sense of place that is tangible, contested, and alive.

Poems I Brought Down From The Mountain

2019

I am drawn to these places where the world is still real,” I wrote, “where I can feel the past, the connection between things, and the course of events that led to this point; where I can look back and see the journey I’ve traveled—a path that can't be quickly paved over with denial or disillusionment.

Upon arriving at the last home in the mountaintop village we’d visit that day, I exchanged glances of gratitude with an entire family living in little more than a cattle shed. Despite enduring genocide, displacement, and unimaginable discrimination, resilience thrived upon dirt floors. The Maya of the Guatemalan Highlands communicate through the eyes, revealing unspoken truths hidden within.

After taking a dozen or so portraits, we’d gather by a crackling horno, sharing a stack of hand-slapped tortillas and a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs. I yearned to immerse myself in such simplicity, yet I knew I must eventually leave the warmth and step outside into the fog and haze, feeling the weight of an ancient legacy bearing down upon me.

Descending the mountain, I’d spotted a puma’s kill cached in a lone cacao tree and heard a rustle and turned back to see a girl with gleaming gold teeth within a broad smile step out of the corn stalk. She seemed to yearn to be seen, as if disappearing from sight was akin to death. Raising my camera, I worried her weary eyes might be seen through a lens of pity as she waved me goodbye, a fading silhouette against a backdrop of mist, and a dream as clear as day.

Give me Silence

2019 — 2025

Give Me Silence, Water, Hope.

Give Me The Struggle, The Iron, The Volcanoes.

Let Bodies Cling Like Magnets To My Body.

Come Quickly To My Veins And To My Mouth.

Speak Through My Speech, And Through My Blood.

-Pablo Neruda

The molten earth serves as both a source of catastrophic destruction and a vital natural resource for rebirth. Eruptions repeatedly bury and disrupt tradition, while the ash enriches the soil for generations, creating incredibly fertile land vital for growth and survival and fostering resilient bodies and minds.

Volcanoes hold immense spiritual significance deep within the human psyche, revered as raw, powerful ancestral spirits whose mood alone can influence entire cycles of life and death. Unpredictable forces blend into myths of our own origin, birthing religions and a complex worldview that balances fear with deep reverence for the landscape we inhabit. The communal mental map of a volcanic-laden land is not merely geographic, but a spiritual cognition passed down through generations.

But as we enter this new age, one further step away from physical reality once grounded in our hardened soles, as our minds digitize, the volcanoes await to purify our souls and reunite our human minds with the earth's. They return us to all its solid granite, just as it is, liquid as a stream of lava and vaporous as the hellish winds that can wipe an entire race clean from the face of the earth, where no bones shall ever be found.

The Geometry of Isolation

2025

The concept of form is influenced by time and space, which shape our experience of it. Forms evolve, erode, or transform over time, showing their dynamic nature. Spatial context—large or small—affects perception and interaction with forms, shaping their meaning. Form design guides navigation and time perception in architecture, landscapes, and art. Zeno's paradox explores time, movement, and perception. Photography captures fleeting moments, creating a static form from motion, akin to Zeno’s idea that motion divides into an infinite number of steps — a visual slice of reality, echoing the idea that motion is made of infinite still points.

As a moment frozen in time, objectively, the moment remains subjective. If time can be frozen, it may not truly exist, as frame boundaries and exposure are subjective choices. Time and space, influenced by how we frame moments, show the interplay between objective and subjective aspects of form. These elements constantly influence and reshape each other. This series examines Iceland’s geological landscape and the forces shaping human experience. In this harsh environment, self-reflection is intense, driven by stimuli that ignite inner encounters, reflecting the outside world and its dualities. Iceland encourages exploration of solitude, resilience, and nature's power.

A stage where epochs are condensed into tangible forms across infinite planes, terrain is a living record of time. Glaciers act as ancient guardians, their cracks echoing millennia of change. In the “Geometry of Desolation,” the focus on coast and volcanic energy was overshadowed by emptiness and emotional intensity. Solitude on black beaches and jagged basalt formations represents a raw intersection of fire and ice. I traveled there to explore how extreme isolation shapes spatial perception. Arctic society is defined by its harsh climate, which fosters a unique identity and cultural richness born of necessity and solitude. Standing at the North Atlantic’s edge, I found myself in an environment that shaped my perception, not just a backdrop. The icy wind was visceral, and the landscape was alive with energy. As time sculpted the cold stone, the surroundings influenced our experience.

Beneath restless waves on the lonely coast lies immense pressure—a struggle for survival that borders on transcendence. The effort here becomes a form of self-awareness, both intimidating and captivating. I felt drawn to merge with the sea, despite fears of being consumed. Yet beyond hardship and solitude, peace can be found if one surrenders to the land and wind. Facing the terrain, I trusted the solid ground beneath me, moving only as my thoughts allowed. The fire of hardship is finite; eternal struggle endures until happiness is possible. True solitude is an illusion. If adversity purifies the soul, we can feel united and whole. From this raw-land vantage, I gazed at Iceland’s ancient mystery—a noir poem. In this fire-and-ice world, I looked back at the world, and everything I knew suddenly felt unfamiliar. 

Theatre of Cruelty

2023 — 2025

Oh! In This Mortal World

There Is No Vindication And No Law,

Which Can Adjudge And Execute The Doom

Of That Through Which I Suffer.

—Beatrice Cenci

The legacy of Beatrice Cenci remains a haunting bridge between the institutional violence of Renaissance Rome and the ritualistic landscapes of Mexico, bound together by the fevered vision of Antonin Artaud. After the 1935 premiere of Les Cenci, Artaud sought a primal refuge in Mexico, aiming to transform the “Theatre of Cruelty” from stage theory into a lived, visceral experience. This intersection revealed a soft power—the feminine defiance of a bewitching beauty that endured through trauma and mirrored the magnetic allure of power and danger. He found a people who, like himself, venerated the Virgin, and a space where the scent of frankincense and sandalwood mingled with the raw, red clay of pilgrimage, asserting that grace was not the absence of suffering but the artful mastery of it.

In this fresh landscape, Artaud’s vision found its true stage not in a traditional theater, but in the very streets and spiritual practices he encountered. He saw the indigenous ritual—the Tarahumara peyote ceremony—as a genuine expression of his artistic vision—a performance in which the line between actor and audience blurred, and existence was stripped down to its most primal, hallucinatory essence. Mexico became the crucible where the symbolic violence of Rome fused with a living, visceral enactment—a land where history wasn’t just remembered but actively re-enacted through art, culture, politics, and everyday life. It was a lasting transformation of space, a constant spectacle of attraction and unsettling danger, a strange spectrum in which the very air itself was heavy with echoes of sacrificed innocence.

This historical connection resonates deeply in today's Mexico, where the Cenci archetype persists in a thousand forms across the country, woven into the fabric of daily life. The modern metropolis of Mexico City, a vibrant, sprawling entity built over ancient sacrifice, stages above all, a daily theatre of cruelty, blending baroque beauty with brutal reality. From the elegant, melancholic street portraits of the victims that evoke “punished innocence,” to the graffiti-covered walls and riot barriers of the Capitol that speak truth to power and perceived repression, a city that breathes life into Artaud’s vision. This duality is manifest in the contrast between the glittering luxury of high society and the raw resilience of street barrios—a magnetic landscape where the sweet aroma of maize mingles with the metallic tang of urban struggle. In Mexico, the subtle, persistent strength of feminine disobedience ensures that the legacy of Beatrice Cenci remains timeless; a lasting whisper challenging the ethos of a population to find grace amid the unsparing spectacle of survival.