Guantanamo: If the light goes out
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Photographer
Edmund Clark
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Date of Photograph
Book published 2010
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Website
This is a study of three ideas of home: The complex of camps at Guantanamo where the detainees have been held; the naval base which is home to the American community and the homes, new and old, in the UK and Middle East where former detainees are now trying to rebuild their lives. Interspersed within these images are Letters To Omar, a selection of cards and letters sent to one detainee at Guantanamo. The dislocated narrative of the book aims to evoke the process of disorientation central to the techniques of incarceration and interrogation at Guantanamo.
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Biography
Edmund Clark is an award-winning artist interested in linking history, politics and representation. His work traces ideas of shared humanity, otherness and unseen experience through landscape, architecture and the documents, possessions and environments of subjects of political tension.
Recent works ‘Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out’ and ‘Control Order House’ engage with state censorship to explore the hidden experiences and spaces of control and incarceration in the ‘Global War on Terror’.
Clark’s work has been acquired for national and international collections including, in Britain, The National Portrait Gallery, The Imperial War Museum and The National Media Museum.
He was awarded the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal for outstanding photography for public service in 2011 and shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Pictet for 2012 for the theme of Power.
