Homeland, USA
Nina Berman
Redux Pictures pour The Sunday Times Magazine
These images are from a series I have been working on since September 11, called Homeland. The images explore the meaning of militarism, security, and identity in American life. In my explorations I photographed Air Force bombers entertaining sunbathers on summer weekends, happy families stepping through the suburbs clutching anti-nuke pills, small town police training to hunt terrorists, and recruitment spectacles where children are transformed into smiling would-be killers.
Preview
All across the country there are now frequent simulation drills costing millions of dollars and involving thousands of participants where various war scenarios are imagined: Islamist terrorists with nuclear bombs, Islamist terrorists hijacking planes, bioterrorists, chemical terrorists, school bus terrorists and shopping mall terrorists. There is even a camp for wayward youth to help them learn how to respond to terrorists. Some of these events have the look and feel of state sponsored performance art, where realism is replaced by theater giving participants a powerful sense of identity and value through a militarized experience. It is this identity, and the ambiguity between real and made up, so emblematic of post 9-11 political discourse, which interests me most.
I came to this project after having spent the last few years photographing very graphic examples of the human cost of war. Many of the wounded soldiers I photographed said they grew up thinking war would be “fun” and had watched the first Gulf War on TV and thought it was “awesome.”
Rather than continuing to show evidence of war, it seemed appropriate for me to now show the fantasies of war, the selling of war, and with it the militarization of American life.
