Entry Title: " Guantanamo: An American Place "
Name: Edmund Clark, United Kingdom
Category: Professional, Photo Essay


Entry Description: Guantanamo: An American Place

Leased from the Cuban government since 1903 the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay is overshadowed by the detention camps occupying one corner of its 45 square miles.

A population of over 6,000 lives surrounded by razor wire in the last enclave of the Cold War. This is small-town America with a high school, golf course, mall and fast food chains; a place chosen precisely because it was thought to be not America, somewhere where hundreds of men could be held beyond the protection of U.S. law.

It is home to a community where I found echoes of a wider America traumatised after 9/11 by a new threat from a religion and cultures it does not understand.

Edmund Clark is best known for his imagery exploring the consequences of control and incarceration. After studying for a degree in History and French at Sussex University and La Sorbonne, Paris, he worked in international research in London and Brussels before gaining a postgraduate photojournalism diploma at the London College of Communications. Monographs include Still Life Killing Time (2007) and Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out (2010). He was nominated for International Photographer of the Year in 2010 and 2011, and awarded the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal for the most outstanding photography for public service in 2011. Other awards include Editorial Photographer of the Year at the International Photography Awards/The Lucies (2010), The British Journal of Photography International Photography Award (2009), a Terry O’Neill/IPG Award for Contemporary British Photography (2008), and a Gold Pencil at the One Show Awards in New York (2003). Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out won the Best Book Award at the New York Photo Awards (2011), the International Photography Awards/The Lucies (2011) and was chosen as one of the best books of 2011 at the International Photobook Festival, Kassel. His work has been acquired for national and international collections, including The National Portrait Gallery, London, The Imperial War Museum, London, The National Media Museum, Bradford, The George Eastman House, Rochester, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has worked as an Artist-in-Residence for the National Trust in Britain.