Homeland

Homeland Synopsis

Nina Berman, as an American photographer looking at America, delivers a caustic and surreal vision of the United States during the Bush years in her second book Homeland. A product of seven years work, with images from across America, Berman gives us a glimpse into the bizarre manifestations of the homeland security state and the ideologies that have reshaped post 9/11 America.

In Homeland, happy families step through suburbs clutching anti-nuke pills. Small town police train to hunt Al-Qaeda. Recruitment spectacles transform children into would be killers. Military goats perform in war on terror scripts. And beneath it all stands the image of a warrior Jesus inspiring megachurch millions toward the end times. Looking at the pictures shot in a rich saturated technicolor, one asks, are the scenes real, or an elaborate state sponsored performance art designed to amuse a public desperately seeking a superhero ending in an age of empire decline?

Berman, an internationally acclaimed photographer best known for her ground breaking images of American military wounded in the Iraq war, Purple Hearts, (Trolley, 2004) once again pushes us to look at American power and myth as it plays out in the heartland.

With an afterword by Michael Shaw, visual critic and creator of Bagnewsnotes.com.

Nina Berman's work has been extensively published and exhibited around the world. Purple Hearts was her first book. "I've been a documentary photographer since 1987 working in a dozen countries including Afghanistan, Bosnia, India and Vietnam, but most of my time has been spent traveling the USA trying to understand the American Way of Life."