“Terror, disruptions of liberty, incarceration, and War echo throughout the work of British artist Edmund Clark, a powerful practice, potent in its approach yet aesthetically gripping.”
artplugged.co.uk
“As the UK’s frontier with continental Europe, the town of Dover and its famous white cliffs are imbued with historical significance. This is a place of arrival and departure by sea and a site of resistance and defence.”
Download File
“Bringing the War Home II is a photo-documentary project that looks to establish the connection between homelife and how it supports military operations.”
bristol.ac.uk
“Even more pressing than those pre-existing images are the images they have through the news media, and through political discourse which in relation to prisons is a very regressive one based on a binary of good and evil, them and us, right and wrong. Typically they will have the image of the mug shots of offenders in their minds. So yes, those are clearly things that I have to be aware of and which do exist in the minds of people who would be looking at my work: the audiences of my exhibitions or the readers of my books or people who look at my work in magazines or online. I am totally aware that that’s the case but in a sense that’s part of the challenge and finding a visual strategy which uses imagery in a way that is unexpected and in some way is original and engaging.”
“In this All Souls Seminar, Clark shared the work produced during his four-year residency at HMP Grendon, and the ensuing exhibitions, catalogues, and monographs. Clark drew on themes of visibility, representation, trauma and self-image in English prisons.”
law.ox.ac.uk
Law-Less Silence: Extraordinary Rendition, the Law, and Silence in Edmund Clark’s Negative Publicity
“Photographs by Edmund Clark (1955–) in Negative Publicity—his collaborative publication on extraordinary rendition—allude powerfully to both the law and silence as metaphysical constructions which act as background and reference points to a variety of human thought and experience. Both the law and silence manifest felt effects: these are not merely abstract terms, but generative frameworks of action which contribute to shaping what we do, and how we are in the world. Clark’s exploration of extraordinary rendition is, I argue, a nuanced discourse on how this damaging practice can be interpreted as an effectual product of the law and silence. His photographs use the power of silence to prompt a self-reflective response on extraordinary rendition, as seen in light of these two metaphysics.”
Download File
index-journal.org
“Edmund Clark has explored the so-called ‘Control order houses’ – the domestic spaces-turned- confinement. According to an anti-terrorism bill passed in 2005, the Home Office was allowed to restrict the civil liberties of individuals on the grounds of “reasonable suspicion”. A person under such suspicion could be separated from their home and family to be put under house arrest in a secret location.”
euronews.com
“Edmund Clark is a photographer who’s work has taken him all over the world, and in our new exhibition his work, photographing the Guantanamo Bay American Naval Base and Detainee Camps, is prominently featured. Together we talk about his process, the challenges faced while photographing such a restricted location, and the themes he was working with.”
soundcloud.com/tmmpodcast
“Walled Off: The Politics of Containment, an exhibition showcasing photographs about containment, detention and human rights, opened on Feb. 1 at the Founders’ Gallery at The Military Museums as part of the Exposure Photography Festival. The exhibit examines well-known examples of detainment and separation through a series of photo essays. Edmund Clark’s Letters to Omar focuses on Omar Deghayes, who spent six years in captivity in Guantanamo Bay. In the Shadow of Trump’s Wall by Peter van Agtmael documents border communities along the Mexican border. And Paula Luttringer’s The Wailing of the Walls tells first-hand accounts of detainees in secret prisons set up by the Argentine military dictatorship during the Dirty War. Among other pieces on display, these essays illustrate the issues of separation and control at the core of the exhibit.”
thegauntlet.ca
“Edmund Clark teaches postgraduate students at the London College of Communication, part of University of the Arts London. For four years Clark has been artist-in-residence in Europe’s only wholly therapeutic prison, HMP Grendon. Edmund Clark’s work links issues of history, politics and representation through a range of references and forms including photography, video, documents, found images and other material. A recurring theme is engaging with state censorship to represent unseen experiences, spaces and processes of control in contemporary conflict and other contexts. “
e-ir.info
“Six leading photographic artists have been awarded Honorary Fellowships of the RPS – Edmund Clark; Mat Collishaw; Professor Karen Knorr; Sarah Moon; Zanele Muholi; and Vanessa Winship. Each photographer is recognised by the Society for their intimate connection with the science or fine art of photography.”
rps.org
“The award-winning work of British artist Edmund Clark intensely reflects on historical and political events, as well as their means of representation through a multilayered combination of different media including photography, film, text document and installation. On the grounds of a photographic, documentary approach, the works of Edmund Clark focus thematically on systems of power and mechanisms of state control.”
loeildelaphotographie.com
“Edmund Clark has engaged with the global state War on Terror in a series of works including Guantanamo, When the lights go out (2010), Control Order House (2013), and Negative Publicity: Artifacts of Extraordinary Rendition (2016). In each of these projects he combines his photographs of the spaces inhabited by alleged suspects and of the objects associated with them with textual evidence including redacted government documents, personal letters, maps, and surveillance photographs taken from state archives. In none of them does he actually photograph the people themselves, instead relying on imaging their environments as a way of countering the stereotypical assumptions that come with the label “terrorist”.”
mdpi.com
“Clark believes that the nearly two-decade-long “War on Terror” launched by President George W. Bush after 9/11 has subtly permeated our culture and everyday lives in similar ways. Working with investigative journalist Crofton Black, Clark has spent the past decade traveling to black sites, detention facilities, and naval bases around the world, seeking to capture the commonplace reality of horrific practices like torture, extraordinary rendition, and indefinite detention.”
wired.com
“What is the relation of vulnerability to precarity, fragility and risk in the making of art? How might art make visible vulnerable states and subjects in ways that challenge conventional aesthetic, political and social categories, subverting existing hierarchies of power while staging quiet, yet potent, modes of dissent?”
ucl.ac.uk
“Mark Aitken examines the relationship between photography and sound. Today we’re in the company of Edmund Clark whose work links history, politics and representation. A recurring theme is engaging with state censorship to explore hidden experiences and processes of control and incarceration in the ‘Global War on Terror’. With ‘punishing’ sounds from Don McLean, Neil Diamond, Sesame Street and Guantanamo Bay.”
mixcloud.com
“The War on Terror is meant to protect us from those who want to do us harm, and that’s a good thing. But its methods are a murkier issue. British photographer Edmund Clark is among the artists (and journalists) goading us to ask a lot more questions about those methods, and their effects on society, culture and our democratic ideals. The International Center of Photography is currently exhibiting work from his various projects about the War on Terror in a show titled “Edmund Clark: The Day the Music Died.””
potd.pdnonline.com
“Since so much of today’s counterterrorism war is cloaked in secrecy, Clark faced a challenge in creating works about the goings-on at military prisons like the one at Guantánamo Bay and the CIA’s now-shuttered “black sites” for interrogations or “extraordinary renditions” — not to mention the detention centers hosted by foreign countries. At times, he arrived at some rather conceptual ways to present the few visuals available.”
hyperallergic.com
“From its inception, the war on terror has been a linguistic (not to mention photographic) black hole. How do you wage an assault on a feeling or a political tactic? As the war has unfolded over 17 years, its leaders have introduced new phrases into the global vocabulary: black site, extraordinary rendition, unlawful combatants. These phrases sound clinical, potentially sinister, but without further context, it is hard to know. They are purposefully abstract, to the point of being obfuscatory.”
Download File
“Edmund Clark, Senior Lecturer on LCC’s MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography, course recently launched 3 solo exhibitions; ‘The Day the Music Died’, ‘The Mountains of Majeed’, and ‘In Place of Hate’, as well as new book ‘My Shadow’s Reflection’.”
blogs.arts.ac.uk
“Edmund Clark is an award-winning artist whose work links history, politics and representation. Recent works ‘Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition’, ‘The Mountains of Majeed’, ‘Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out’ and ‘Control Order House’ engage with state censorship to explore the hidden experiences and spaces of control and incarceration in the ‘Global War on Terror’.”
parisphoto.com
“Flowers play a significant role in British artist Edmund Clark’s powerful exhibition ‘In Place of Hate’ at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, the result of a three-year residency at Europe’s only therapeutic prison, HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire. The show opens with a lightbox installation set on the floor, which visitors can enter, and which features pressed flowers picked from the prison grounds set into its top. It has the exact dimensions of a cell, as per its title 1.98m2 (2017).”
apollo-magazine.com
“Through early May, the International Center of Photography in New York is hosting a new exhibition, The Day the Music Died. Titled after Don McLean’s 1971 pop song, The American Pie, the exhibition brings together photographs, videos, and installations of the British artist Edmund Clark. His work, exhibited for the first time in the United States, is an inquiry into American incarceration programs in Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA prisons created in the wake of the September 11 attacks as part of President George W. Bush’s “War on Terror.””
loeildelaphotographie.com
“Edmund Clark isn’t one to pick easy subjects for his work. As an editorial photographer, he found himself working with teenage fathers and elderly prisoners, and this set him on his route to working with terror suspects, prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, and, most recently, a three-year residency at the UK’s only wholly therapeutic prison, HMP Grendon, where he worked with the inmates to produce four new bodies of challenging work, each employing methods new to his practice, which are now on show at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.”
studiointernational.com
“British photographer Edmund Clark and ICP Director of Exhibitions and Collections Erin Barnett discuss Edmund Clark: The Day the Music Died. Clark has spent ten years exploring structures of power and control in the so-called global War on Terror. Edmund Clark: The Day the Music Died presents photographic, video, and installation work focusing on the measures deemed necessary to protect citizens from the threat of international terrorism. It also explores the far-reaching effects of such methods of control on issues of security, secrecy, legality, ethics, and culture.”
icp.org
“Clark’s largest New York solo exhibition to date, The Day the Music Died, starts with an easily relatable work: a tracklist of the songs used to interrogate prisoners detained by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. American Pie joins Stayin’ Alive among others, playing in the back of your head while you walk through the International Center for Photography’s gallery space. It provides a contradictory soundtrack to some disturbing and confusing images.”
theguardian.com
““Edmund Clark: The Day the Music Died” takes visitors through eight series the photographer has produced over the last decade around the themes of the global war on terror. “It’s a reflection really on how terror has affected all of us,” he adds. “The potential threat of terror, how those measures impacted on us in terms of how it affects our culture, how it affects our standards, norms and ethics of legality, and how it sort of seeps into our everyday lives,” he continues. “That’s what terror does — to makes us live with the potential of that threat, and how that moderates our behaviors and moderates the societies we live in.””
wwd.com
“For many, Don McLean’s “American Pie” is merely a song from decades past; for others, it is reminiscent of the 1959 plane crash that killed singer Buddy Holly, a tragedy named “The Day the Music Died” after McLean’s lyric. For British photographer Edmund Clark, it signifies a little more. “It’s a beautiful ballad about America coming to terms with the death of Buddy Holly,” says Clark over the phone. “But then I find out that it’s played for sleep deprivation and interrogation purposes in military prisons and my relationship to what was my childhood song changes.””
interviewmagazine.com
“Interview with artist Edmund Clark to coincide with Ikon’s exhibition – Edmund Clark, In Place of Hate”
VIDEO
“In the first room of Edmund Clark’s exhibition at Ikon Gallery, a low white wall demarcates a small rectangular space. Built into the top of this wall is a lightbox layered with an array of pressed wild flowers. It’s a delicate vision until you realize that the cramped space outlined is the exact dimensions of a cell within HMP Grendon, the prison at which Clark has been artist-in-residence for the past three years.”
elephant.art
“Ever since it has been declared in 2001, Bush’s brand of “War on Terror” has spread internationally as a favorite tool to cover up a number of atrocities and a growing abuse of human rights, from war crimes to unprecedented security measures and safety precautions. How can art contribute to our understanding of justice in a time of global conflict? For Edmund Clark, it is critical that art responds to these narratives, even if it’s only drawing attention to them. In his recent body of work, the photographer deals with the concept of accountability.”
widewalls.ch
““I hate myself because I am a murderer… You can’t save me… We are a faceless, forgotten part of society…” These are just some of the intimate, often devastating thoughts of the inmates at HMP Grendon, a category B men’s facility in Buckinghamshire and Europe’s only “wholly therapeutic” prison. Their words accompany My Shadow’s Reflection, a series informed by Edmund Clark’s artist-in-residence at Grendon, which forms part of his larger body of work, In Place of Hate, on show at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham from 06 December.”
bjp-online.com
“The award-winning artist has spent years working on projects about incarceration and control but, as Grendon’s artist-in-residence, he spent an intense two or more days a week on the inside, beginning in 2014. There he made his own work in response to the prison environment, and facilitated art made by the men as part of their intensive psychotherapy and rehabilitation.”
ft.com
“Photographers Edmund Clark and Alex Majoli were also honored, each receiving a $5,000 Smith Fund Fellowship. Clark’s project “The Unseen Consequences and Networks of Air Strikes and Drone Warfare” is intended as a multi-media investigation of the expanded use of air-strikes and drone weapons as the primary strategy of the on-going American-led War of Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.”
smithfund.org
“Edmund Clark’s exhibition ‘War of Terror’ explores the consequences of the ‘war on terror’ by focusing on the hidden processes used by governments to keep citizens safe. His work features imagery from Libya, Guantanamo Bay and the UK and is currently being exhibited at London’s Imperial War Museum. The BBC’s James Menendez asked Edmund why he had chosen this subject matter.”
bbc.co.uk
“Art, Justice and Terror was a day of debate, performances and discussion held at IWM London. Curated by London College of Communication, participants examined the ways in which art can challenge understanding and change social attitudes to war and justice. You can listen to a panel including artists, lawyers, eyewitnesses, writers and academics discussed issues explored in Edmund Clark’s War of Terror, currently on display at IWM London.”
iwm.org.uk/justice
iwm.org.uk/terror
“In the last four months there have been four separate terrorist attacks in the UK: against this backdrop, the Imperial War Museum London and London College of Communications symposium Art, Justice and Terror on 17 June came at a vital time.”
bjp-online.com
“Art, Justice and Terror is a day of discussion and debate curated by London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, in response to War of Terror, a solo show at Imperial War Museum London by Edmund Clark. The symposium brings together artists, lawyers, eyewitnesses, writers and academics to discuss how art may contribute to informing social attitudes on matters of justice in a time of global conflict, when the law has at times been absent.”
aestheticamagazine.com
‘Edmund Clark: War of Terror concludes at London’s Imperial War Museum at the end of August after being on view for more than a year. It is a shame that VIP visitors to the outstanding recent Photo London were not offered a special walk through with the artist because this exhibition is one of the most outstanding photo exhibitions the Unseen Eye has witnessed lately.’
loeildelaphotographie.com
“Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition combines two kind of image: photographs and documents. The photographs depict mostly unassuming locations: office buildings, airports, a hotel room. The reader learns that these are the sites at which the cogs of extraordinary rendition—roughly, the practice of abducting people and sending them to be interrogated, tortured, imprisoned, or all three—once turned.”
best-photography-magazine.com
“The awards presented to For Freedoms and to Edmund Clark & Crofton Black, Aperture, as well as to Michael Christopher Brown, attest to the desire to honor artistic engagement with social and political problems. In the words of Erin Barnett, “the winners of this year’s Infinity Awards may be more overtly political than in past years, but [they were selected because their work was thought to be] the most innovative way to engage artists and audiences in a variety of new platforms.””
loeildelaphotographie.com
“Edmund Clark and Crofton Black’s Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition offers a complex portrayal of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s secret detention practices in the war on terror and the process of investigating them. It reflects five years of work by Black and Clark on secret detention sites—the logistical structures that enabled them and the people held in them.”
icp.org
“Edmund Clark is nearing the end of his three-year residency at the UK’s only therapeutic prison, HMP Grendon. As well as assembling his own body of work about the institution, the people it holds and the structures it represents, Clark assists the prisoners themselves as they develop their own artistic practices and, occasionally, feature in his. He is keen to stress that this aspect of his role does not constitute ‘art therapy’ – something the prisoners participate in outside of Clark’s involvement, and heavy with its own history. While people have been finding catharsis in creation since human beings first scratched on cave walls, art therapy as a distinct discipline emerged in the 1940s. Developed out of psychoanalysis, art therapy began in mental health institutions and has since spread into hospitals, private practices and correctional institutions. Some schools of thought have stayed close to their psychoanalytic roots, regarding the work produced by patients as a kind of visual speech to be investigated, while others simply believe in the restorative and relaxatory properties of drawing, painting or sculpting. Call it art therapy or just ‘art’; there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these practices can be transformational for all kinds of people, including prisoners. In fact, HMP Grendon is the only UK prison to have proven to reduce reoffending rates. “
plinth.uk.com
“Throughout history the arts have been subject to varying degrees of state control in different countries across the world. It is evident that art can survive even under a severe curtailment of artistic freedom, but can creativity flourish? State support is significant to the development of the arts, but even in countries where freedom of expression is encouraged, it can also unduly influence its direction through funding, policies and control over education. Should art be connected to the state?”
royalacademy.org.uk
“The war on terror continues to spark public debates about secrecy and security. It doesn’t make news headlines like it used to but the military campaign rages on. Initiated by George W. Bush after the terror attacks in 2001, large numbers of mainly Muslim men have been detained, interrogated and tortured. For the past 10 years, the British photographer Edmund Clark has documented some of the most controversial aspects of the fight against global terrorism.”
artefactmagazine.com
Download File
“Når man kommer inn i den britiske fotografen Edmund Clarks nye utstilling, blir man møtt av tekster i stedet for fotografier. «2003 En gigantisk sort statue høyre arm rettet mot skyene ansiktet tildekket av stoff med hvite stjerner på blå bakgrunn og røde og hvite striper mens to menn med hjelmer kledd i brunt og grønt klatrer en metallrampe knytter kjetting og tau rundt halsen på den» og «2001 sort røyk fra et høyt tårn sett fra andre siden av veien og skyskrapere dens tvilling til venstre etterlatt intakt og et fly lett på skrå sort silhuett mot den blå himmelen». Bildene disse tekstplakatene fremkaller i vår bevissthet, danner bakgrunnen for utstillingen War of Terror, hvor Clark forsøker å vise nettopp dette – det skjulte.”
morgenbladet.no
“Over the 12 days of Christmas, Apollo contributors and guests select their highlights of 2017”
apollo-magazine.com
“Highlights from five series of work by photographic artist Edmund Clark address the complex issues of security, secrecy, legality and ethics surrounding the state control measures taken by the UK and its allies to protect their citizens from the threat of international terrorism. Within the international scope of Clark’s work, the show centres on the experiences of UK citizens and residents suspected but never convicted of terrorist-related activities, and on the involvement of the British government in the ‘Global War on Terror’.”
Download File
“The exhibition brings home the vivid reality as to what happens when the most basic liberties are sacrificed on the altar of security. Someone asked me why I was going to the exhibition as I must already know what it would be about. To an extent that was true. Having covered the cases of a number of the men put under control order detention in this country, much of the exhibition was eerily familiar.”
morningstaronline.co.uk
“The opening image in Edmund Clark’s current exhibition, War of Terror, is not properly an image at all. In the video installation, ‘Orange Screen, War of Images’ paragraphs of text appear on a blank orange background, describing iconic images from the War on Terror in plain, forensic language devoid of context – 2003 A giant black statue right arm raised to the sky face obscured by fabric of white stars in blue background and red and white stripe as two men in helmets wearing brown and green climbing a metal ramp wrap chains and a rope around its neck…“
photomonitor.co.uk
“‘2001 black smoke from a tall tower seen across roofs and skyscrapers its twin to the left intact and a plane lightly tilted black silhouetted against the blue sky’. Laid out on a screen the colour of the infamous Guantanamo Bay detainee uniforms, as devoid of punctuation as it is of emotion, this statement conjures up an image that is now part of the collective psyche. The video piece sets the tone for Edmund Clark’s exhibition at IWM London, in which he merges documentary and conceptual practices to reveal the hidden side of the War on Terror, when state control pushes and sometimes shatters ethical and legal boundaries.”
apollo-magazine.com
“On 6 July 2016, Sir John Chilcot published the findings of the Iraq Inquiry: a 2.6 million word document constructed over seven years of painstaking investigation into the Blairite government’s actions leading to the war with Iraq. This heavily anticipated endeavour was vastly overshadowed by post-Brexit disarray and, whilst the report confirmed Blair’s calculated dismissal of expert consultation, it impotently failed to trigger judicial procedure despite clear evidence of deceptive conduct leading to the deaths of an estimated 405,000 people. While western media outlets debate the possibility of Blair’s loss of credibility, he continues to live a life relatively unscathed, maintaining a schedule of public appearances and a net worth of £60 million, while Iraq continues to spiral into further catastrophe.”
ibraaz.org
“Edmund Clark discusses his work in IWM London’s latest exhibition, Edmund Clark: War of Terror. Looking at issues of security, secrecy, representation and legality, the show focuses on the measures taken by states to protect their citizens from the threat of terrorism, and the far-reaching effects of such methods of control.”
Video
“The Imperial War Museum continues to work with artists prepared to present challenging and critical work on Britain’s role in contemporary conflict. Following on from the Iraq War photography of Sean Smith, a retrospective of the artwork of Peter Kennard and an installation addressing the plight of Gaza by Rosalind Nashashibi, IWM London’s latest offering is Edmund Clark’s War of Terror, running in London until 28 August 2017.”
imperialwarmuseum.wordpress.com
“London’s Imperial War Museum has an outstanding track record in staging hard-hitting exhibitions, with Peter Kennard’s photo-montages and Edward Barber’s documentary photographs being two very recent examples. Added to the roster is this disturbing new show of work by award-winning artist Edmund Clark. War of Terror, which runs until August next year, focuses on the measures states take to counter perceived terrorist threats and the malign impact they have on all our lives and explores the experience of people in Britain suspected — but never convicted — of terrorist-related offences in the interminable “war on terror.””
morningstaronline.co.uk
“From Guantanamo to Britain via Libya, an exhibition devoted to the war against terrorism opens Thursday at the Imperial War Museum in London.”
lapresse.ca
“This street is where an American pilot lives. He flew rendition flights [a controversial CIA practice allegedly aimed at facilitating the torture of prisoners on non-US soil]. They carried people around the world to secret prisons and to be interrogated. I can’t tell you how I found where the pilot lives. I’d risk getting someone into trouble if I did that.”
Download File
“But the show is in an unexpected location: The Imperial War Museum, a partly government-financed institution whose mission is to document Britain’s military history, and which was established in 1917 to commemorate British heroism on and off the battlefield in World War I.”
nytimes.com
“This is a house in Kuwait. It belongs to the brother of an ex-Guantánamo Bay detainee. I’m not going to say who he was. The architecture of the room struck me as incredibly confining. The contrast between the bare walls and the ornate carpet was striking, plus the innocent child’s plaything – the slide – has been put right up against the wall in an uncomfortable way. Then there’s the basketball hoop in red, white and blue – an American presence in this country, in this person’s life.”
theguardian.com
“Attempts to make art out of recent political events often feel more gauche than “Guernica”. The Bush-era war on terror may have captivated our collective imagination, but few have been able to grapple with its moral complexities in art. With the passage of time, though, the human element—compelling, empathetic portraits of both perpetrators and victims—will doubtless re-emerge, and outlast any political bromides.”
economist.com
“Renowned for his work exploring issues of security and secrecy in the ‘war on terror’, Edmund Clark’s Negative Publicity sees the British photographer examine the CIA’s programme of extraordinary rendition. On the occasion of a new monograph and year-long exhibition at the Imperial War Museum London, he talks to Tim Clark about the challenges of photographing invisible mechanisms of state control.”
a-n.co.uk
“Throughout history, conflicts have been documented, investigated, challenged and responded to by artists. From Goya’s searing Disasters of War etchings of the Napoleonic Wars to the harrowing and disillusioned First World War works of David Bomberg, Laura Knight’s documenting of female experience of the Second World War, and more recently the brutal and confrontational works of Peter Howson produced in Bosnia, artists have managed to create work that both critiques and reflects the political circumstances of the conflicts in context. The work of photographic artist Edmund Clark, who is the subject of a major new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London, constitutes just such an undertaking, offering one of the most comprehensive and challenging engagements with the politics and realities of war in the era of the so-called “Global War on Terror.””
Download File
“The term ‘War on Terror’ was first used by George W. Bush in 2001 in the wake of 9/11. It would come to describe a whole range of measures and actions used by the U.S., Britain and others against Islamist terror groups. A new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum looks at these methods through the eyes of artist Edmund Clark. Using photographs, extensive documentation, graphic illustrations and audiovisual projections Clark has constructed a series of installations which explore the lengths that states will go to to protect their citizens.”
bbc.co.uk
Download File
“Negative Publicity, by Edmund Clark and Crofton Black – a journalist who works for, among others, the human rights group, Reprieve, and The Bureau of investigative Journalism – tells the story of this activity with photographs and documents. For four years, Clark photographed the nondescript buildings that always figure in a story of this kind, while Black researched and tracked down the relevant documents.”
1000wordsmag.com
“I began the interview by noting that the book’s exquisitely clever title, ‘Negative Publicity’ contains at least three layers of meaning: the negatives of photos, the negativity of absence (whether of abductees or information), and an allusion to the “negative publicity” motivating a law suit the book documents between two aviation companies implicated in extraordinary renditions. I asked the authors whether there were more.”
bjp-online.com
“Negative Publicity, sub-titled Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition, is a compound of elegant presentation and rough stuff. The unBook of the Year, it is at once objet d’art and charge sheet; a pretty, awful warning. Its documentary dossier and discontinuous text are interleaved with photographs by Edmund Clark, invisibly stained with images of what is not there: the victims of rendition and its executives and extras (civilian aircrew and auxiliaries), licensed by Washington and London to conduct subtractions.”
standpointmag.co.uk
“Black, a researcher, spent years gathering post-9/11 documents about the rendition process, which Clark, an artist, has supplemented with photographs. The title comes from a document in which a contractor is worrying about the potential attentions of people like Black and Clark. In the course of the book, the authors mimic what happened to the phrase extraordinary rendition by slowly making the phrase negative publicity describe the gaps left in language and geography as data is withdrawn. In language, these blanknesses are created by technocratic euphemisms, Glomar responses, and whole pages’ worth of black-block redacted words.”
theparisreview.org
“Während US-Präsident Barack Obama im Februar diesen Jahres einen letzten Anlauf gestartet hat, das Gefangenenlager Guantánamo auf Kuba zu schließen, sind in den letzten Jahren immer mehr Details über das dahinterstehende System illegaler staatlicher Aktivitäten ans Licht gekommen. Ungewöhnliche Einblicke in das Thema bietet die Ausstellung “Terror Incognitus” des preisgekrönten britischen Künstlers und Fotografen Edmund Clark, die zurzeit im Mannheimer Zephyr – Raum für Fotografie – zu sehen ist.”
taz.de
“If the secrecy and brutality of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp bothered you, photographer Edmund Clark and counterterrorism investigator Crofton Black’s book, Negative Publicity: Artefacts of Extraordinary Rendition, will make your blood boil.”
slate.com
“Edmund Clark is an award-winning artist interested in linking history, politics and representation. His work traces ideas of shared humanity, otherness and unseen experience through landscape, architecture and the documents, possessions and environments of subjects of political tension.”
bensmithphoto.com/asmallvoice
“A new book gives a glimpse of the ordinary buildings the CIA used as part of the US war on terror, says Catherine Slessor.”
architectsjournal.co.uk
Download File
“Negative Publicity, a new book by investigator and journalist Crofton Black, and photographer Edmund Clark, offers a fascinating insight into the process of unearthing and documenting the extrajudicial arrests and interrogations that made up the covert “extraordinary rendition” system operated by the United States in the years after the September 11th attacks.”
vice.com
“Photographer Edmund Clark spent 4 years spent hunting for sites of extraordinary rendition and photographing any location associated with the programme. None of the photo printed in the book shows any clear evidence of torture, kidnapping or any other human right abuse. There is nothing spectacular to witness here, just mundane places such as the entrance to a Libyan intelligence service detention facility, the corridors connecting cells to interrogation rooms, anonymous streets or the bedroom of the son of a man formerly imprisoned in a CIA black site. Clark calls the making of these photographs “an act of testimony.””
we-make-money-not-art.com
“For the past five years, the photographer Edmund Clark and the investigative journalist Crofton Black have been researching the existence and location of ‘black sites’, part of the CIA’s programme of extraordinary rendition.”
Download File
ft.com
“Ed Clark’s latest book concludes his dissection of the war on terror that was jointly and secretly waged by several Western States.”
phmuseum.com
“Secrecy in the war on terror has proved rich ground for artists. Many have exploited the theme of surveillance, tracing data trails and security cameras, alerting us to our own complicity in watching and being watched. But equally attractive has been the fact of the secrets: the blanks, the unknowns, the redactions.”
theintercept.com
“Der britische Fotograf Edmund Clark befasst sich seit vielen Jahren mit eminent politischen Themen wie Macht und Herrschaft. Seine Bilder zum Thema “Krieg gegen den Terror” sind preisgekrönt. Er fotografiert Orte, die ein “Normal-Sterblicher” kaum je betreten wird, Guantanamo z.B., oder die Militärbasis Baghram in Afghanistan.”
info.arte.tv
“Ausstellung: Fotografische Arbeiten des Briten Edmund Clark im Mannheimer Zephyr-Raum – Enthüllung von Orten, an denen Terrorismus bekämpft wird.”
main-echo.de
“Illegale Foltercamps, geheime Gefangenentransporte, Guantanamo – mit seinen Fotos dokumentiert der englische Fotograf Edmund Clark auf eindringliche Art die Schattenseiten des “War on Terror” nach dem 11. September 2001. Sein neuestes Projekt, zentrale Arbeit einer aktuellen Ausstellung in Mannheim, verdeutlicht die Folgen einer schicksalhaften Verwechslung.”
art-magazin.de
“Ich bin etwas früher bei der Ausstellungseröffnung “Edmund Clark: TERROR INCOGNITUS” im Mannheimer ZEPHYR, denn ich möchte mich in Ruhe umsehen. Die vielen Bilder an den Wänden wirken ästhetisch und ich überlege mir, was sie mit Terror zu tun hat. Plötzlich fällt mein Blick auf ein Bild mit einem modernen Stuhl und mir ist sofort klar, das ist ein Folterstuhl.”
neon.de
“Edmund Clark dokumentiert Irrwege der Terrorbekämpfung – Foto Ausstellung in Manheim.”
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“Ein leeres Schlafzimmer, ein mit Müll übersäter Tisch, ein Gelände im Nordosten von Kabul… Auf den ersten Blick wirken die Aufnahmen von Edmund Clark völlig unspektakulär. Doch der Schein trügt. Der mehrfach preisgekrönte britische Fotograf hat die unbekannten Seiten des Terrorismus zum Thema seiner Kunst gemacht. Er fotografiert Orte, an denen Terrorverdächtige illegal verschleppt, festgehalten und gefoltert wurden.”
swr.de
“Interview and exhibition preview with photographer Edmund Clark (in English).”
swr.de
“Ress-Engelhorn-Museen zeigen Edmund Clarks recherchen zum amerikanischer Kampf gegen den Terror.”
wiesbadener-kurier.de
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“Ausstellung “Terror Incognitus” des Briten Edmund Clark ab 31. Januar zu sehen.”
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“Edmund Clark ist Fotograf, 53 Jahre alt, gewann zahlreiche Preise und arbeitet seit zehn Jahren künstlerisch und forschend an einem einzigen Thema: “War on Terror” – wird seit dem Terroranschlag vom 11. September 2001 unter Führung der USA von vielen westlichen Staaten ausgeführt. US Präsident George Bush startete das damals mit der Operation “Enduring Freedom”. Doch diese Operation erweist sich immer mehr als Bumerang. Viele Unschuldige mussten sterben, eine Spirale der Gewalt wurde in Gang gesetzt und demokratische Rechte beschnitten. Edmund Clark hat sich auf die Spur des CIA und dessen illegalen Aktionen gesetzt. Seine künstlerische Fotodokumentation “Terror Incognitus” ist jetzt im Raum Zephyr der Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen in Mannheim zu sehen.”
swr.de
“Edmund Clarks Bilder zeigen keine Gewalt, sondern leere Räume. In ihnen wurden illegal verschleppte Terrorverdächtige festgehalten. Der britische Fotograf zeigt, dass auch demokratische Staaten im Kampf gegen den Terror misshandeln können.”
Daserste.de
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“Clark photographed previously unrecorded aspects of the prison camps and naval base at Guantánamo. In another series, Clark investigated the unconceivable existence of so-called Control Order Houses in the United Kingdom. In recent work, Mountains of Majeed, Clark delved into the world of military camps in Afghanistan. These bodies of work will come together to be shown in his Mannheim exhibition, “Terror Incognitus”.”
Video
“Seit „nine/eleven“, dem Anschlag auf das World Trade Center am 11. September 2001 in New York, hat sich die Welt verändert. Die Bedrohungen, die wir dem Terrorismus zuschreiben, haben eine Spirale der Gewalt ausgelöst. Und dass der sogenannte “War on terror”– der Krieg gegen den Terror – auch verborgene Folgen verursacht hat, davon erzählt der britische Fotokünstler Edmund Clark.”
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morgenweb.de
“Der Londoner Fotograf Edmund Clark will Machtsysteme aufzeigen, die im Verborgenen liegen, will wissen, wie Menschen auf die Bedrohung durch den Terrorismus reagieren. In seiner Ausstellung “Terror Incognitus” stellt er unter anderem eine dreiteilige Foto-Reihe zu Guantánamo vor.”
Deutchlandfunk.de
“Auf die Spuren des “War on Terror”, das weltweiten Kampfes gegen den Terrorismus, hat sich der britische Fotograf Edmund Clark begeben. Er zeigt nicht die Terroristen und ihre Taten, sondern versucht, die verdeckten Aktionen der Gegenseite ans Licht zu bringen. Auch hier finden sich Unmenschlichkeit und Unrecht, Personen werden verschleppt, gefoltert, ohne Anklage eingesperrt. Die Ausstellung mit dem Titel “Terror Incognitus” ist bei Zephyr – Raum für Fotografie der Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen in Mannheim zu sehen.”
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“It’s realizing that the visual document has surpassed the textual document. It used to be that things were written down. You can call me a photographer, but in a sense it’s more about how I use the pictures. I’m interested in how imagery can explore ideas and say things about experiences rather than being seen as single images telling a truth. I don’t believe that images tell a truth. You create documents and bodies of work that explore ideas.”
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“Tout droit revenu d’Afghanistan, le photographe Edmund Clark propose une série de clichés poignants du camp militaire américain de Baltram. Ils ont été pris l’an derniern et documente la fin de l’opération Enduring Freedom, lancée par les Etats-Unis peu après les attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Clark cherche à montrer le contraste entre la base militaire et la nature qui l’entoure, en prenant le point de vue des soldats. Des photos saisissantes.”
polkamagazine.com
“The pictures are unnerving in their stillness: brightly lit, perfectly composed, high definition. Frozen with clarity, the foreground leaps off the wall. The photos look almost staged. At the center of the gallery, a vertiginous column of razor wire rises from the floor, casting a trembling shadow-matrix across the wooden boards. Walk through the exhibition and the shuddering spikes will intercept your gaze, the metal vortex’s forceful gyre unifying the static images.”
hyperallergic.com
“By bringing together Majeed’s paintings and his own photography, Clark has created a dialogue that is surely missing between the wounded country of Afghanistan and its foreign occupiers.“
photomonitor.co.uk
“It is a view on the experience of many of those based at Bagram Airfield, America’s largest base in Afghanistan, who never actually engaged with the enemy. Clark thoughtfully contrasts the man-made landscape within the camp with the mountains of the Hindu Kush which dominate the horizon and landscape both within and outside the camp’s perimeter.”
tfeanda.wordpress.com
“Edmund Clark’s work has always explored politics on a domestic scale, through photography, found imagery and text. His most recent series have explored the War on Terror and 2014 collection, The Mountains of Majeed, is currently on display at Flowers Gallery, London. The arresting images examine the experiences of the military personnel who have been engaged in “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan.”
aestheticamagazine.com
“The theme of the exhibition is very topical and looking forward to seeing work that will engage us and make us pause and think about the role of surveillance in our everyday lives and what we take for granted.”
theculturalist.com
“Edmund Clark’s video installation Virtue Unmann’d stems from drone strikes but digs into history and Roman poetry. Premiering at Surveillance.02, Virtue explores traditions of virtue and sacrifice in war in the context of drone strikes on tribal areas of Pakistan that border Afghanistan.”
huffingtonpost.com
“Both are, in a way, embarking on a ‘hidden conversation.’ Schmersal overtly ‘talks with’ the old masters, the paintings and people long lost in historical time, whereas Clark embarks on a re-telling of the traditional views of Afghanistan, the American army, insurgents – and the war fought between unknown enemies. Here, ‘the other’ is key to self-understanding for both artists work.”
huffingtonpost.co.uk
“The British photographer’s latest book is the Bagram Airfield U.S. Military base in Afghanistan, which one held the infamous detention facility. Also published on TIME LightBox.”
time.com
“The view from soldiers and photojournalists in Afghanistan offers a glimpse of the boredom and the terror of war as they take us out on patrol, along for the raids and into the battles. And the best of them show us war through the eyes of those living with the horror. But this gritty reality is not the experience of the many soldiers and civilian contractors who rarely go beyond the perimeter of their base camp.”
Wired.com
“Last month, Nato launched its new mission in Afghanistan, sending 12,000 troops to assist national security forces. Their main hub will be Bagram, once the largest US base in the country. In an extract from his new book, photographer Edmund Clark describes his last visit as Operation Enduring Freedom wound down.”
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“One set of pictures captures the view from inside – “the experience living on the base and never leaving, captured, essentially, by an occupier” – and the other is simple wood, canvas and board, a local Afghan showing how he interprets his native landscape.” In doing so, Clark highlights the gulf between the occupiers and the inhabitants – in both perspective and technology.”
Vice.com
“Edmund Clark is one of the most interesting artists working today, exploring what is arguably the defining issue of the past 13 years. He’s interested in the wars waged by the USA and UK in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the fall-out from this foreign policy and how it impacts on us here at home.”
itsnicethat.com
“The paintings seem to be some kind of reminder of that way of life and its power to endure. But it is the mountains themselves that symbolise it more than anything else.” After all, as Clark says in his conclusion to the book, the mountains, both real and imagined, “belong to Majeed”.”
theguardian.com
“Von Afghanistan bekommen die Soldaten und das zivile Personal in Bagram sonst wenig mit, denn der Großteil verlässt die Basis nie. Von dem Land sehen sie vor allem die Berge – die auf den Gemälden und jene in der Ferne. Sie alle gehören Majeed.”
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“In december 2014 zou er een einde zijn gekomen aan de Amerikaanse gevechts- operaties in Afghanistan. Een troepen- macht van 9.800 militairen blijft in het land om de veiligheidsdiensten te trainen en antiterroristische campagnes tegen de rest- fracties van Al-Qaeda te ondersteunen. Tegen het einde van 2015 wordt dat aantal gehalveerd. En uiterlijk eind 2016 zouden alle strijdkrachten het land moeten verlaten hebben, met uitzon- dering van een ‘normale aanwezigheid op de ambassade’.”
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“This indefinable book, published by the progressive new imprint Here Press, is what history looks like, in the Foucaultian, archaeological sense. In exposing difficult-to-photograph practices, it brings forth a kind of visibility that would otherwise remain hidden. Suburbia, though it may dream of violence, provides a veneer of respectability to all that takes place within. Clark pulls aside the net curtains.”
rationalist.org
“Bagram Airfield is the US military’s largest enclave in Afghanistan, and yet few of the 40,000 people who work there ever see anything more of the country they occupy than the mountain-top view above the base’s heavily fortified walls. Edmund Clark tells Diane Smyth why he made this the subject of his work.”
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“What would Robert Capa have made of drone warfare and the amalgamation of cameras and weaponry? Smart bombs may have brought the lens closer to death and destruction but, says Paul Wombell, theyʼve made the experience of war much more distant. The challenge for artists and photographers, he argues, is to resist the pull of the frontline and portray a truth thatʼs much closer to home.”
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“This intelligent and aesthetically intriguing book is a wonderful example of how a photographic approach compliments the subject revealing the mediums’ true nature…This work is as much about the representation of politics as the politics of representation.”
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“In his haunting and powerful photography, Clark offers an alternative to the media narrative that portrays suspected terrorists as un-human, ‘other’, and innately evil. At a time when the international community is all to aware of many covert government practices, Clark’s photography stands as a reminder for the global community to rethink the assumptions made in the name of national security.”
world policy arts-policy nexus
“’Be sure he stays inside and that you go straight in. He’ll be in breach of his conditions if he steps outside the front door. And be careful what you ask him. Remember, the house is almost certainly bugged.’ That was my introduction to the life of a man known only as CE.”
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“It’s been a vintage year for limited-edition artists’ books. Here is the pick of the bunch.”
The Guardian
“В 2005 году в Великобритании был принят закон о предотвращении терроризма, давший министру внутренних дел право без решения суда издавать «приказы о надзоре» за людьми, в отношении которых существовали «обоснованные подозрения» об их причастности в террористической деятельности. В частности, подозреваемого можно переселить и наложить серьезные ограничения на его жизнь.”
Esquire.ru
“I’ve seen more cameraman and photographers since my return from Guantánamo than I can remember, all of them wanting me to pose for pictures. Edmund Clark, on the other hand, wanted to photograph everything in my home – except for me. He wanted to tell the story of Guantánamo through the prism of the domestic, of personal space. He sets pictures of the homes of former prisoners around the world against those of the cells in which we were confined. In his collection are images that will be for ever etched in my mind.”
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Control Order House featured over ten pages in Esquire.
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“It’s a remarkable body of work that documents a period of our law in this area, the judgement against the individual and, of course, the photographs that record his living experience under the Control Order.”
independent.co.uk
“In conjunction with the exhibition Prix Pictet: Power, which opened at Aperture Gallery on December 5, 2013, Aperture hosted a conversation between two of Prix Pictet’s short-listed photographers, Edmund Clark and Jacqueline Hassink. Kofi A. Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations writes, ‘The work of the short-listed photographers provides a vivid portrait of human vulnerability. But they also remind us that the same forces that might engender despair can also be the source of great hope.'”
Visit the Aperture website for the first part of the talk then follow the links to Vimeo.
video
“Control Order House is a starkly atmospheric study of the functional rooms in a house where Clark was allowed to spend three days and two nights photographing everything apart from the person held there.”
theguardian.com
“The Global War on Terror has been presented in the media mostly with images of nighttime tracer fire, IED explosions, fatigued soldiers and Guantanamo razor wire — depicting a spectacle easily dismissed as happening “over there,” far from western suburbia. By contrast, Edmund Clark‘s photographs of an unremarkable British semi-detached home makes the amorphous war relateable. Control Order House is a top-to-bottom survey of a three-bedroomed residence in which a pre-trial, UK terror suspect lives under house arrest.”
raw file blog
Conference at Le Bal in Paris around limited-editions and self-publications selected for the Kassel Fotobook Festival Best Books of the Year. With Max Pinckers (The Fourth Wall), Edmund Clark (Control Order House), Véronique Besnard (Additional Sattelite) and Carlos Spottorno (PIGS) during the Fotobook Festival. (Low sound)
Video
“I first wrote about Clark’s work in November 2010 when his book Guantánamo: If the light goes out was excerpted in The Guardian. I was struck by the way Clark focused on the objects of violence as a conscious strategy to avoid the dehumanising effects of conventional photojournalism. I interviewed Clark (via Skype on 31 October 2013) to discuss Control House Order, and his reflexiveness is evident throughout the recording.”
david campbell.org
“This is control order, an understated great statement of our legal system. Behind these photographs is another image. The frame full of the absence of any object: pregnant with meaning. But here’s the twist: this is a portrait of the machinery which has tied the judiciary, executive and legislative in the same web of deceit.”
TIME MAGAZINE.COM
“Eine von Clarks jüngeren Arbeiten, die wir auf der gegenüberliegenden Seite zeigen, befasst sich mit Unterkünften, in denen in Großbritannien Terrorverdächtige überwacht werden. Seit 2005 das Gesetz zur Bekämpfung des Terrorismus verabschiedet wurde, kann der britische Innenminister das Leben Verdächtiger jeder Nationalität kontrollieren lassen – ohne vorausgegangenes Gerichtsverfahren..”
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“L’11 settembre 2001 ha cambiato le strategie di prevenzione del crimine. Nel suo recente libro Control Order House, Edmund Clark documenta un particolare regime di detenzione senza processo: quello riservato a presunti terroristi contro i quali sono state raccolte prove inammissibili in tribunale.”
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“We live in a moment when many photographers and audiences have become ambivalent and self-conscious about documentary photography as a means to make statements about the condition of the world. Edmund Clark, however, effectively uses a documentary mode in a political context. His approach brings to mind Walker Evans’ distinction between “useful” documentary and art in a “documentary style”, a distinction that only highlights the difficulty of defining “documentary”, and which has since been blurred by photographers in myriad ways.”
Fraction Magazine
“CE is nooit in een openbaar proces berecht maar is wel ‘relocated’”
herepress.org
“An architectural line drawing of the façade of a semi-detached house, totally commonplace in its suburban anonymity, appropriately adorns the cover of Control Order House, a compelling study of one such subversive use of this modern internment. After challenging the British Home Office, photographer Edmund Clark gained restricted access to an anonymous location and its unidentified occupant (known as CE), who existed in exile, strictly monitored under house arrest.”
claxtonprojects.com
“If there is a balance to be struck between liberty and security, how far do we allow that balance to be tilted towards a security that in all likelihood is not perfectly achievable anyway? Are we going to be happy with the government suspending the rights of some people for reasons that are kept secret from them (and, of course, from us as well)? Are we going to be happy losing large parts of our privacy (if not all of it)?”
cphmag.com
“Clark was the first artist to be granted permission to work and stay in a house in which a man suspected of terrorist activities was held under a Control Order in the United Kingdom. Without showing the man’s face, Clark’s images explore this form of detention by exposing the house and living conditions of the man.”
worldphoto.org
“In Guantanamo, you agree to shoot digitally so they can look at your pictures. You agree you won’t photograph: security cameras, empty watchtowers, the faces of detainees or the military and that you won’t photograph the sky and the sea in the same picture. Every day the security consultant goes through your pictures on the back of your camera – I was shooting on a large digital Hasselblad so that took forever – and if you contravene those conditions you have to delete the picture.”
ideastap.com
“Through redacted documents relating to CE’s case and an approach to the photography which makes even the most prosaic details suddenly feel intimidating and oppressive in this context, Control Order House is a sterling achievement, an oddly unsettling impersonal documentation of one man’s struggle with the system.”
itsnicethat.com
“What I find interesting about the naval base is that it is small town America. It is cut-off living behind a big razor wire fence. It is literally a microcosm. As a non-American I was struck by the motifs – the reflections of spirituality, of militarism and icons of American culture – the cartoon simplicity that we associate with American culture.”
spoonfed.co.uk
“I’m not sure quite how long I’ve known photographer Edmund Clark. I think we met in 2008 when he had published a book of photographs, Still Life: Killing Time, taken in British prisons, which captured the essence of his work: objects or places, beautifully photographed, with seemingly effortless clarity and composition, that provide an insight into aspects of prisoners’ experience. Mundane in many cases, or metaphorical, or, in other cases, dream-like, they seem to allow room to reflect on the human beings whose lives are marked out by these spaces, or are reflected in these objects.”
andyworthington.co.uk
“According to Clark, this house, located ‘in a faceless suburb’, represents ‘the reaction of a government and society to the fear and chaos of terrorist attacks’.”
Download File
“Rather than documents to monumentalize the historical fact of the camps, these images illustrate three experiences of home: the naval base at Guantanamo which is home to the American community and of which the prison camps are just a part; the complex of camps where the detainees have been held; and the homes, new and old, where the former detainees now find themselves trying to rebuild their lives.”
theactivistwriter.com
“That interest would take us from Weber to Foucault who took his analyses of the interrelation of knowledge and power to a discussion of strictly regulated institutions, including asylums and prisons. Yet here, Clark says, the focus on detail and the exclusion of faces (and, largely, bodies) serves to bring about an identification with the detainees, not as Afghans, Iraqis or Arabs, and not as Muslim males, but simply as human.”
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“I wanted to look in a different way to my Guantanamo work and to Still Life Killing Time, which were about looking for meaning in the (arrangement of) objects and spaces. After visiting the house, I knew it would be a challenge to represent it visually in the way I had worked before. For that reason, I wanted to concentrate on a type of video diary of the life of the controlled person in the house but without his presence, and to use photographs in a very unmediated, unedited, uncomposed way, and to use this imagery to reflect how we see/visualise space through forms associated with commercial and consumer choice, how we exercise control and choice in our houses and homes.”
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“Still life almost always resonates the sense of time, such as freshness, the ephemeral, the accumulation of objects, patina or fragility.”
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“Britain’s ageing population and increasing predilection for custodial sentences is creating an interesting problem for its prisons – ageing prisoners. Only one prison, E Wing at Kingston Prison, Portsmouth, is devoted to ageing lifers, however, housing murderers, rapists, paedophiles and other criminals from the late 50’s onwards. It is, as photographer Edmund Clark points out, the future for our prison services, and a mixture between an old people’s home and a jail.”
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“The book includes essays written by writer and life prisoner Erwin James, and photographer Simon Norfolk who, he says, was left ‘reeling’ by what he saw. ‘What leaves me so out of sorts,’ writes Norfolk, ‘is that I don’t want to feel sympathetic to these people. In these days of electronic tagging and community service sentencing, you have to be real scum to be sent down for the rest of your natural life… But why are there bars on the window of a man who can’t walk without a frame? What kind of escape plan can be hatched by a man who can’t remember how to go to the toilet? It’s because Clark’s pictures pull me in these different directions, cleaving my half-baked prejudices, that they are so brilliant.'”
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“Edmund Clark’s book on Guantanamo is befittingly strange. Its chilling power is achieved certainly via the photographs, which are spare, considered and precise, but also by the disorientating sequencing of the pictures, which follows the rhythm of a nightmare.”
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“Cliches do not appear in the photographs of Edmund Clark, instead it is all about the objects: a lighter provided by the penitentiary, a cane at the foot of a bed, all part of a closed world. It makes this photo book disturbing, captivating, in a word: challenging.”
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“Within Guantanamo’s economy of control, access to – or denial of – such titbits of comfort gained extraordinary importance. Clark tells of one detainee who for years reportedly received no correspondence at all; when he was finally passed a letter by the authorities the entire document had been redacted. ‘The levels of control in Guantanamo were total because the experience of incarceration was part of the whole interrogation process,’ says Clark. ‘Your interrogator was in control of everything that you could or could not get: the thickness of your mattress, whether you had blankets or not, and when you did, or didn’t, receive your post.'”
Download File
“I’ve seen more cameramen and photographers since my return from Guantanamo than I can remember, all of them wanting me to pose for pictures. Edmund Clark, on the other hand, wanted to photograph everything in my home – except for me.”
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“The work contained here has already won many awards and accolades, with more to come no doubt. It has been exhibited widely, sometimes simultaneously across multiple venues. It is a remarkable, multilayered body of work, produced with consideration and subtlety, and with much more enduring power and intelligence than those notorious snaps from Abu Ghraib.”
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“I was prompted to think about Clark’s powerful project when @martincoward tweeted this week that in Clark’s photographers the ‘objects speak of their implication in political violence’. Clarks portrayal of three experiences of home – the base where prisoners are detained and the American military community lives, as well as the houses where former inmates now reside – is concerned with the objects and spaces of home. Martin’s remark calls attention, therefore, to the way situations do not need a face to convey their significance.”
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Reprieve [a human rights organisation which tries to help detainees] believes Guantanamo represents a small minority of the people being held in these conditions around the world, many of whom are in prisons we know very little about, Clark says. There are rumours about a new block being built at Kabul, and let’s not forget Bagram, a big prison on the US airbase in Afghanistan. Legally and politically, the legacy of Guantanamo will live on.”
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“If any kind of photography can, no: should portray a place like Guantanamo, it is contemporary photography. The prison and the system behind it, operating in if not a legal vacuum then in what comes perilously close to it, would not be able to function if it did not use principles our modern societies have been perfecting for such a long time.”
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“‘Once I’d done one book about prison, Guantanamo seemed an obvious progression’, says Clark. ‘It struck a chord with me. I wasn’t sure initially how I would deal with it, but I was interested in the way that its inmates had been demonised through representation. Guantanamo was such a symbol, and these people had gone through that, and been told that they were the worst in the world. Yet here they were released without charge. I was initially interested in exploring the mismatch between the way they had been represented and the normality of their lives. That’s why I thought of just photographing where they lived, because it plays on our shared experience of personal domestic space.'”
Download File
As part of Brighton Photo Biennial, Edmund discusses Control Order House, Guantanamo, Still Life Killing Time, and ongoing research into drone warfare.
Video
“London boasts one of the most diverse populations in the world. To mark the Olympics and Paralympics, The Photographers’ Gallery commissioned 204 portraits of 204 Londoners, each originating from one of the competing nations. This exhibition, The World in London, brought together the work of British and international photographers. The Space published 15 of the photographs which you can see here. You can also visit the project’s website at www.theworldinlondon.org.uk to see the 204 photographs and find out more about the project.”
Watch Video
“Contemporary photography often offers very little obvious solace. It is cold and unforgiving, at least at first sight. If there is beauty it has to be discovered. If there is a message or even some form of truth, it has to be found, discovered. Contemporary photography is thus a child of its, our, time. It reflects the world we’ve built for ourselves, whether we like it or not.”
Video
“Capturing a sense of home in a place where few feel welcome, photographer Edmund Clark’s project, on display at New York’s Flowers Gallery, illustrates the division between the familiar and the foreign, defenders and terrorists, torturers and the abused. Through his images, many of them subtle and otherwise innocuous, Clark forces the viewer to engage with the human consequences of the infamous detention facility.”
Time Lightbox
“Photographer Edmund Clark’s latest body of work is a series of pictures examining the institutional spaces of Guantanamo naval base and the psychological after-effects experienced by detainees. It is displayed in an exhibition at Flowers East Gallery in London, as well as being available in a book published by Dewi Lewis.”
Guardian.co.uk
“Photographer Edmund Clark’s project Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out looks at spaces and objects that tell the ongoing story of confinement and dehumanization at the American prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Clark photographed the homes of released detainees in the UK and travelled to Guantanamo Bay where he was granted access to the prison camp and the American base where soldiers and interrogators live. The project also includes a body of work called Letters to Omar, a collection of correspondence sent to a detainee named Omar Deghayes while he was imprisoned in Guantanamo. The letters — all of which have been scanned, redacted, cataloged and stamped — illustrate the extreme levels of control exerted over every aspect of prisoners’ lives. A selection of work from Clark’s project is on view now at Flowers Gallery in New York through January 12th. A monograph of the entire project is available through Dewi Lewis Publishing.”
Show
“The segmentation of time and space are obviously fundamental to the experience of control and confinement and I was struck by how many motifs of these themes I saw in the surroundings and possessions of E Wing.”
somethinkblue.com
“If Clark similarly reframes ready-made phenomena, he occasionally embeds them in a more narrative matrix. A large portion of the exhibition is devoted to an installation on former detainee Omar Deghayes. Images of kittens and flowers, taken from cards sent to Omar during his detention, are projected onto the wall in succession. As he was allowed only reproductions, their fading suggests further degrees of removal from the real.”
Artforum
“Seven-two-seven. You got mail!’ It took three or four years before Omar Deghayes heard those words. In that time he didn’t receive any post. Not even letters from his family. There were perhaps one or two, but after lawyers took up his case in 2005 he started to receive a lot more correspondence. In fact he started to get so many letters and cards that the guard who brought the post used to make a joke of it. ‘Oh, Omar,’ she would say with a smile, ‘you’re famous now.'”
granta.com
“The project won the portfolio category in BJP‘s 2009 International Photography Award, but Clark continued to work on it well into 2010 and the final edit is now being presented in two solo shows in London, at Flowers East (15 October – 13 November) and at Photofusion (01 October – 26 November).”
bjp-online.com
“This was my room when I came back from Guantanamo. I felt very comfortable in it, even though it was so small and the ceiling came down so close. It felt like I was sleeping in my cell, but I had control. I was able to turn the light on or off when I wanted, to wake up or sleep when I wanted. It was small like my cell but there was no harassment, no knocking on the door, no searches and no fights or beatings. Outside I had other problems but here in this room I was completely serene, comfortable, calm.”
featureshoot.com
“What’s the greatest picture you didn’t take?
‘Great’ is a very difficult word to justify about anything. There is a great image (above) by Ed Clark, but another Ed Clark … he photographed ‘Among the Mourners’ as Franklin Delaware Roosevelt’s hearse headed to the train station in Warm Spring, Ga., in 1945. The photograph shows Navy bandsman Graham Jackson playing ‘Goin’ Home’ on the accordion, with tears streaming down his cheeks.”
telegraph.co.uk
“A plain photograph of a rose in a square vase embodies this metaphor of the human torn between the interior and the exterior, a symbol of liberty enclosed in a suffocating aquarium whose transparency is compromised by the seepage of the stifled flower. This confusion caused by the conflicting concepts reaches its height in the video that accompanies the exhibition: we see comforting and humorous postcards as monotonous soundtrack plays in the background mixing testimonies of the horrors suffered during interrogations and the text of international laws applying at Guantanamo. These three diverging layers of information take on a new meaning, calling into question all that we think we know about reality.”
lejournaldelaphotographie.com
“Coverage of aging prison populations will receive more column inches, online commentary, pixels and pingbacks in the coming years. Just as social security needs overhaul in the US and the pension age is to be raised in the UK, so too new means of fiscal policy are needed to cater for the elderly behind bars … on both sides of the pond.”
prisonphotography.org
“Clark was eventually able to talk with some of the men, build relationships, and explain what he was interested in doing. They were receptive, he says, because he wasn’t interested in photographing them or interviewing them, and because as people who had spent a prolonged period living in a cell, they understood the significance of one’s space.”
pdnonline.com
“Edmund Clark’s book on Guantanamo is befittingly strange. Its chilling power is achieved certainly via the photographs, which are spare, considered and precise, but also by the disorientating sequencing of the pictures, which follows the rhythm of a nightmare.”
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“When I first started showing the work to people in America and meeting curators and so on, one museum curator did actually say to me ‘if I show these I’d lose my job.’ Others said they would be interested in collecting the photographs, but could never show them. However, I think that will change over time. Right now, for a lot of Americans, anything to do with Guantanamo still equals terrorism. There’s not even a question of whether the prisoners have any legal rights or anything.”
guernicamag.com
“Many have been imprisoned for years, subjected to interrogation abuses and denied fundamental due process rights. A handful were driven to suicide. It is in the daily process of their incarceration that the exercise of absolute power over the individual is most clearly seen. Every detail is controlled: whether a detainee is allowed toilet paper, mail or a pen, or whether his cell is in constant light or darkness. A man deemed non-compliant can be moved hourly from cell to cell or kept in solitary confinement; one who refuses to eat will be strapped to a chair and a tube forced down his nose.”
prixpictet.com
The narrative of these images aims to evoke the process of disorientation and dislocation central to the techniques of incarceration at Guantanamo. The photographs force the viewer to jump from prison camp to domestic stillness, from freedom to confinement and from light to dark. Clark explores the powerful resonances of control, causing a sense of unease through unexpected juxtapositions, giving a human insight into the experience of the men released without charge after years of incarceration. As the men re-adjust to their newfound freedom, their post-prison homes reveal the contrast between their domestic interiors and the confined spaces of the prison camps although motifs of confinement are present in both.
photofusion.org
“The jury considers it as a political and moral responsibility, to highlight this extensive photographic research. The work impressed the jury both as a book, as well as in the fragmentary nature of a group exhibition. It combines a classic documentary imagery with a daring, experimental approach. Without showing the horror directly and confronting with disturbing details, the images trigger feelings of anxiety and restlessness, and call attention to a significant current issue. The narrative complexity of the work invites the viewer to link the various dimensions themselves and to approach the issue intellectually and emotionally.”
fotodocsde
“You can never really believe anything … that’s true with most prisons. It’s what they’re not telling you that’s the thing. They do try and steer you down a certain path, like going on the food preparation tour, meeting the guards and talking to the guards, going to the show cells rather than the real cells …”
spoonfed.co.uk
“The Prevention of Terrorism Act, passed in 2005, gave the home secretary the power to place a control order on anyone, of any nationality, suspected of involvement in terrorism. Since then, more than 50 men have been held under control orders, their liberty restricted and many removed from their homes. The photographer Edmund Clark was allowed to visit one man in the anonymous suburban house where he spent eight months in 2011.”