Homeland
Nina Berman
Trolley Books (Publisher)
Published on 5. May 2008
Book
Hardback
196 pages
978-1-904563-72-3 (ISBN)
Description
Nina Berman, as an American photographer looking at America, delivers a caustic and surreal vision of the United States during the Bush years in her second book Homeland. A product of seven years work, with images from across America, Berman gives us a glimpse into the bizarre manifestations of the homeland security state and the ideologies that have reshaped post 9/11 America.
In Homeland, happy families step through suburbs clutching anti-nuke pills. Small town police train to hunt Al-Qaeda. Recruitment spectacles transform children into would be killers. Military goats perform in war on terror scripts. And beneath it all stands the image of a warrior Jesus inspiring megachurch millions toward the end times. Looking at the pictures shot in a rich saturated technicolor, one asks, are the scenes real, or an elaborate state sponsored performance art designed to amuse a public desperately seeking a superhero ending in an age of empire decline?
Berman, an internationally acclaimed photographer best known for her ground breaking images of American military wounded in the Iraq war, Purple Hearts, (Trolley, 2004) once again pushes us to look at American power and myth as it plays out in the heartland.
With an afterword by Michael Shaw, visual critic and creator of Bagnewsnotes.com.
Nina Berman's work has been extensively published and exhibited around the world. Purple Hearts was her first book. "I've been a documentary photographer since 1987 working in a dozen countries including Afghanistan, Bosnia, India and Vietnam, but most of my time has been spent traveling the USA trying to understand the American Way of Life."
In Homeland, happy families step through suburbs clutching anti-nuke pills. Small town police train to hunt Al-Qaeda. Recruitment spectacles transform children into would be killers. Military goats perform in war on terror scripts. And beneath it all stands the image of a warrior Jesus inspiring megachurch millions toward the end times. Looking at the pictures shot in a rich saturated technicolor, one asks, are the scenes real, or an elaborate state sponsored performance art designed to amuse a public desperately seeking a superhero ending in an age of empire decline?
Berman, an internationally acclaimed photographer best known for her ground breaking images of American military wounded in the Iraq war, Purple Hearts, (Trolley, 2004) once again pushes us to look at American power and myth as it plays out in the heartland.
With an afterword by Michael Shaw, visual critic and creator of Bagnewsnotes.com.
Nina Berman's work has been extensively published and exhibited around the world. Purple Hearts was her first book. "I've been a documentary photographer since 1987 working in a dozen countries including Afghanistan, Bosnia, India and Vietnam, but most of my time has been spent traveling the USA trying to understand the American Way of Life."
More details
Person
Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, journalist and educator. Her work explores American politics, militarism, environmental issues and post violence trauma. She is the author of Purple Hearts - Back from Iraq, (Trolley, 2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (Trolley, 2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and An autobiography of Miss Wish (Kehrer, 2017) a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Additional fellowships, awards and grants include: the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation, Pictures of the Year International, the Open Society Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the Aftermath Project. She started her photographic career in 1988 as an independent photographer working on assignment for the world's major magazines including Time, Newsweek, Life, the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, German Geo, and the Sunday Times Magazine. She covered a range of issues, from women under siege during war in Bosnia and Afghanistan, to domestic issues of criminal justice, reproductive rights, and political process. Her work has been exhibited at more than 100 international venues from the Whitney Museum Biennial to the concrete security walls at the Za'atari refugee camp. Public collections include the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of the City of New York, the Harvard Art Museums and the Bibliotheque nationale de France among others. She has participated in workshops around the world for young photographers and writes frequently on photojournalism for the Columbia Journalism Review. She is a tenured Professor of Journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she directs the photojournalism/documentary photography program.