Debi Cornwall: Necessary Fictions - (Hardcover)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><strong>From the author of <i>Welcome to Camp America</i>, an eerie exploration of America's performance of power and identity in the post-9/11 era </strong></p><p>What are the stories we tell ourselves, the games we play, to manage unsettling realities? Made on ten military bases across the United States since 2016, <i>Necessary Fictions</i> documents mock-village landscapes in the fictional country of "Atropia" and its denizens, roleplayers who enact versions of their past or future selves in realistic training scenarios. <p/>Costumed Afghan and Iraqi civilians, many of whom have fled war, now recreate it in the service of the US military. Real soldiers pose in front of camouflage backdrops, dressed by Hollywood makeup artists in "moulage"--fake wounds--as they prepare to deploy. <p/>Brooklyn-based conceptual documentary artist and former civil rights lawyer Debi Cornwall (born 1973) photographs this meta-reality--the artifice of war--presented in the book with a variety of texts to provoke critical inquiry about America's fantasy industrial complex. The book includes an essay by PEN Award-winning critical theorist Sarah Sentilles.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>A critical consideration of photography and its unreliability as a factual document.--Jean Dykstra "Brooklyn Rail"<br><br>In Necessary Fictions, Cornwall has thoughtfully shown us the point where the separation between real war and a well-made reality show becomes disturbingly hard to comprehend.--Loring Knoblauch "Collector Daily"<br><br>Twenty years after 9/11 and the start of the War on Terror, Necessary Fictions takes a good look at how far we've come in filling the needs of the military-industrial complex as efficiently as possible.-- "Smithsonian"<br><br>Debi Cornwall's bright, bleak and spare imagery wrestles with an inherent paradox: the artifice and necessity of war games. With a rare perspective, at once entranced and dispassionate, Cornwall examines staged desert landscapes, enemy role players and soldiers-in-training with discerning detail and a visual sensibility for composition and palette that is splendidly sophisticated. This deeply researched and thoughtfully designed volume succeeds in provoking bigger questions regarding the necessity of conflict.-- "What Will You Remember?"<br><br>Necessary fictions" both characterizes state-created realities, whether simulation in the military training context or the deployment and consumption of fictions in civilian society, and also comments on the documentary form.--Sunil Shah "American Suburb X"<br><br>The book itself, a hefty 324 pages containing 104 images, is beautiful. The images are beautifully reproduced on thick paper. The very artfulness of the photos seem to belie the deadly seriousness of the book.--Kenneth Dickerman "Washington Post"<br><br>A fascinating book from photographer Debi Cornwall just out on Radius Books is Necessary Fictions. . . What stories we tell ourselves in the service of empire is a multi-faceted, many-layered concept that is difficult to attack, but Cornwall guides us to a sobering analysis of the machinery of policy by presenting deceptively simple imagery.--Michael Delgado "LA Weekly"<br><br>Alongside the images in the book is a huge amount of research, . . . and Debi also writes more personally about her own experiences with the players. . . This response is typical of Debi's open and questioning approach to her art, which is part conceptual and part documentary . . . the book leaves a lot of room for interpretation--Matt Alaigiah "It's Nice That"<br><br>Real soldiers, dressed by Hollywood makeup artists in "moulage" (fake wounds), pose front of camouflage backdrops, turning the entire exercise into a performance -- but for whose benefit, and at what cost? These are just some of the questions Necessary Fictions raises, but answers do not easily come--Miss Rosen "Feature Shoot"<br><br>...It's hard country to photograph, featureless and dismal even at the sweet hours of dawn and dusk, which makes Debi Cornwall's aptly titled photographic suite Necessary Fictions all the more remarkable, with well-written text that accompanies her arresting photographs...Cornwall has a clear penchant for exploring the uncivil nature of the world in which men and women are paid to 'hurt people and break things'...preparing for real hell by means of real make-believe. Novelist Ben Fountain calls it the Fantasy Industrial Complex, and Debi Cornwall's book is an extraordinary chronicle of its Disneyland.--Gregory McNamee "Los Angeles Review of Books"<br><br>...The images guide us through the narrative, the accompanying text builds on the already compelling attention to detail of these scenarios...the wealth of factual references-contracts, lawsuits and statistics-reflect Cornwall's thorough, investigative method...--Izabela Radwanska Zhang "British Journal of Photography"<br>
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