|
|
About the PhotographerBased in Boston, Claire Beckett earned a BA in Anthropology from Kenyon College. She then worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin, West Africa, before going on to earn an MFA in Photography at Mass Art. Her photographs have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum and Carroll and Sons Art Gallery, and in group shows at Mass MoCA, the National Portrait Gallery, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Aperture Foundation, and FOTODOK (NL), among others. She has been awarded an Artadia Award and was artist-in-residence at Light Work. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Public Culture and The Boston Globe. Her work is included in a number of collections including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. |
|
From 2006-2017 I embedded myself on military bases within the United States, photographing the depiction of Arabs and Muslims within the context of counterinsurgency training for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Features of these training environments included costumed role-players, elaborate Hollywood-inspired sets, and staged tableaus hinting at the imagined lives of far-away people. Those portrayed in the photographs include military personnel, often combat veterans playing the role of enemy combatants, immigrants from Iraq or Afghanistan intended to make the training look and feel realistic, and local American civilians hired to populate the artificial villages.
As an artist I believe it is my role to invite a viewer to contemplation, and the works themselves allow space for us to ask questions of ourselves. With this project I look at the way Americans such as myself interact with other cultures, and how we collectively understand our place in the world. I want to draw attention to the problematic depiction of “cultural others” in these trainings, and to challenge their implicit assumption of American cultural superiority.
The photographs in this series were made with a 4”x5” camera and are printed as 30”×40” pigment prints.
Features of these training environments included costumed role-players, elaborate Hollywood-inspired sets, and staged tableaus hinting at the imagined lives of far-away people. Those portrayed in the photographs include military personnel, often combat veterans playing the role of enemy combatants, immigrants from Iraq or Afghanistan intended to make the training look and feel realistic, and local American civilians hired to populate the artificial villages.
As an artist I believe it is my role to invite a viewer to contemplation, and the works themselves allow space for us to ask questions of ourselves. With this project I look at the way Americans such as myself interact with other cultures, and how we collectively understand our place in the world. I want to draw attention to the problematic depiction of “cultural others” in these trainings, and to challenge their implicit assumption of American cultural superiority.
The photographs in this series were made with a 4”x5” camera and are printed as 30”×40” pigment prints.
Afghan-American civilians playing the role of Afghan villagers, 2009. © Claire Beckett
Civilian Joshua Wood playing the role of an Iraqi civilian, 2008. © Claire Beckett
Tiefort City Church, (formerly the Jabal Village Mosque), 2017. © Claire Beckett
Specialist Gary Louis Sims playing the role of “Safah Mehdi Faris,” member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, 2009. © Claire Beckett
American civilians playing the role of Iraqi village women drinking tea, 2009. © Claire Beckett
Above Medina Jabal Town, 2009. © Claire Beckett
Lead insurgent Sergeant Ariel Combs, 2017. © Claire Beckett
