Welcome to Camp America is Brooklyn-based conceptual documentary artist and former civil rights attorney Debi Cornwall’s vivid and disorienting glimpse into the US Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—known as “Gitmo”—through photographs, once-classified government documents and first-person accounts.
The book gathers three series: Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play showing residential and leisure spaces of both prisoners and guards; Gitmo on Sale, depicting the commodification of American military power through gift-shop souvenirs; and Beyond Gitmo, investigating life after detention with 14 men once held as accused terrorists, now cleared and freed, living in nine countries from Albania to Qatar. Environmental portraits in the free world replicate conditions of military regulation photography at Guantánamo Bay: no faces are shown.
With unique construction in English and Arabic, the book seeks common ground while asking provocative questions about compromises made between humanity and fear in the post-9/11 era.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Debi Cornwall: Welcome to Camp America.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Bookforum
David O'Neill
These images ask us to consider the crude and insidious forces that have kept the bad dudes and the rest of us folks as limp and compliant as possible.
Photo-eye Blog
Forrest Soper
...this book needs to be experienced personally to grasp its full impact...The relatively innocent photographs are paired with text and evidence so alarming that it hardly seems real.
Mother Jones
Mark Murrmann
…an exhaustively researched, exceptionally photographed documentation of one the most heavily guarded prisons in the world.
The New York Times Magazine
Teju Cole
...a sustained look at a shameful and ongoing violation of human decency by the U.S. government.
Huck
A surreal portrait of life inside Guantánamo Bay, Camp America. Photographer Debi Cornwall steps inside the walls of the infamous US military prison, exposing an uncanny world of gift shops, bowling alleys and beachfront views.
The Intercept
Siddhartha Mitter
For every image that feels familiar, there is another that breeds a fresh kind of upset.
Art in America
Michael McCanne
Cornwall was able to capture a sense of the material life of Guantánamo, for both detainees and the soldiers guarding them.
Featured image is reproduced from Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay, Debi Cornwall’s remarkable new collection of photographs of the notorious post-9/11 U.S. military prison. In this beautifully printed volume with special flat open binding, gatefolds and blown in inserts, Cornwall presents once-classified government documents and first-person accounts alongside photographs of residential and leisure spaces for both prisoners and guards, anonymous portraits of prisoners post-release, and a selection of souvenirs from the GTMO gift shop. (Yes, gift shop.) See the work in person at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, through December 22nd. continue to blog
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FORMAT: Hbk, 7 x 9.5 in. / 190 pgs / 70 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 GBP £40.00 ISBN: 9781942185314 PUBLISHER: Radius Books AVAILABLE: 9/26/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Radius Books. Text by Moazzam Begg, Fred Ritchin.
Welcome to Camp America is Brooklyn-based conceptual documentary artist and former civil rights attorney Debi Cornwall’s vivid and disorienting glimpse into the US Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—known as “Gitmo”—through photographs, once-classified government documents and first-person accounts.
The book gathers three series: Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play showing residential and leisure spaces of both prisoners and guards; Gitmo on Sale, depicting the commodification of American military power through gift-shop souvenirs; and Beyond Gitmo, investigating life after detention with 14 men once held as accused terrorists, now cleared and freed, living in nine countries from Albania to Qatar. Environmental portraits in the free world replicate conditions of military regulation photography at Guantánamo Bay: no faces are shown.
With unique construction in English and Arabic, the book seeks common ground while asking provocative questions about compromises made between humanity and fear in the post-9/11 era.
