Prompt: After viewing the presented series by Edmund Clark, read the following commentary also by the artist. After digesting the work, go in depth on what you believe the meaning, connotation and significance of the work is.
If the Light Goes Out:
Home from
photographs and text by
Edmund Clark
“When you are suspended by a rope you can recover but every time I see a rope I remember. If the light goes out unexpectedly I am back in my cell.”
—Binyam Mohamed, Prisoner #1458
“I went down to the basement and turned on the light. I wanted to see my room which was exactly as I had left it...It was a strange feeling – seeing my black leather couch, my blue sofa bed, my glass fronted wardrobe, and my model shop again. I’d decorated my room when I was thirteen and had never changed a thing.”
—From “Five Years Of My Life: An Innocent Man in
These images are from three places associated with the prison camps at
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.
The post-prison homes illustrate the contrast between the shared humanity of their domestic interiors and the spaces of the prison camps. Motifs of imprisonment and entrapment are present in both, resonating with the prisoners’ experiences — and coming to terms with them. Glimpsing the evening sun through a window is a simple thing but readjusting to having the freedom to do so may not be so simple. Like a net curtain, memories can obscure the view.
On the naval base an American community lives surrounded by razor wire in the last enclave of the Cold War. This is small-town
The narrative is confused and unsettled as the viewer is asked to jump from prison camp detail to domestic still life to naval base and back again.
This disjointed edit is intended to evoke the disorientation of the process of incarceration and interrogation at
Still life imagery of personal space and possessions follows a long tradition of symbolism and metaphor. My work draws on the ‘Vanitas’ style of 17th century Dutch painting in which objects like hourglasses, candles, skulls and flowers symbolized the passage of time and the transience of human existence.
— Edmund Clark took part in the 2009 Rhubarb-Rhubarb International Photographic Review.
5 comments:
The work is based upon being in prison for lengths of time. Guantanamo, especially, is very large, very serious, and for very bad criminals. Confinement takes a toll on anyone who is a victim of it, and can result in mental disturbance. The commentary involved a quote by a person released for prison who came back home to his old life, which happened to stay exactly the way it was left. I personally believe prison documentary is extremely fascinating. Prison photography especially, can find away to portray incarceration in impacting ways.
Latendresse
5-6
Period 5
It is very difficult for me to find the meaning of these pictures. They seem so different. I think this artist may have spent some time in jail, so he wants to express how it was in photography. I like the image with the ipod. It just looked really cool.
The series created by Edmund Clark is very realistic. He shows us how life in prison and the outside world as diferent but similar. When your in prison everything is restricted and theres walls that divide you from the outside world. But alson in reality we have some walls that also seperate us from others. I care for how he included the words of prisoners that once lived both in the inside and outside world it give a lot of feeling to the images. Although i must say that I couldnt find the meaning or mesage that the first image is giving.
I think the main focus of these images is structure. Every picture has significance in one way or another. Some of them are very high-tech and modern, while others are very rugged and older-looking. No matter how modern or old they all look, they all have a great sense of structure. Everything is planned out really well, and contains what looks to me like a geometric pattern of some sort. Maybe it's just me, but i think it's really interesting. Even the picture with the barbed wire sticks out to me because someone did the geometry and planned the fences to look like that. The angle in that picture make it look really crazy and out of control, but altogether, it's very well structured and cool looking.
Ryan Hamlin
Period 5
Eli Groves
What were the motives behind the man who was responsible for the idea of imprisoning civilians who infringed the boundaries of society? There are numerous possible explanations to this question, a few of which can be seen in the imagery.
The first is exactly what we see, emptiness. Prison is an indistinctive and tasteless commonplace of withdraw, a place for alienation, desolation and solitude from any association. We see prison was created for the depravity of culture and community.
Was the original idea of prison to take away that person from society to prevent further damage?
The second is a connection we must make to something else we see (and read in the explanation). The afterlife of prison and the mental effects it has caused on ex-inmates. The outside life of the locked-up has been slowly deteriorating along with their mentality, although unchanging. That life may seem consistent, but the behaviorism and attitude of the human to which it belongs is not. These changes and the everlasting experiences of prison take a hold and ultimately transform that outside life to conform to the new perspective of that ex-convict to more comfortably suit their desires. These changes and desires are seen in the homes of ex-inmates and seem awfully similar to their previous confinement.
Or was the original idea of prison to cannibalize the minds of those people?
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