Abstract:
What makes Debi Cornwall’s photographs compelling is not so much what they show as how they show it. Welcome to Camp America brings together three bodies of work on the US military base at Guantanamo Bay. Known by its airfield designation code GTMO, or ‘Gitmo’ for short, the base became notorious in 2002 when a facility was opened on-site for detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists and enemy combatants captured after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Over the last sixteen years, 780 men have been held at the centre. Today there are forty-one. Yet the name Guantanamo Bay still conjures images of orange jumpsuited, masked, shackled men being paraded behind the razor-wire fences of Camp X-Ray, reports of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, and the detainees’ imprisonment for years without charge or criminal trial. These images linger in our memories and trouble Cornwall’s photographs of the far more banal aspects of life on the base.
Details / PDF:
The full-text PDF of this article can be downloaded from Informit. You can purchase the article, or access Informit for free via a public library account, such as the State Library of Victoria.