Artist Statement, Simulating Iraq

From 2006-2023 I embedded myself on military bases within the United States, photographing the depiction of Arabs and Muslims within the context of counterinsurgency training for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Features of these training environments included costumed role-players, elaborate Hollywood-inspired sets, and staged  tableaus hinting at the imagined lives of far-away people. Those portrayed in the photographs include military personnel, often combat veterans playing the role of enemy combatants, immigrants from Iraq or Afghanistan intended to make the training look and feel realistic, and local American civilians hired to populate the artificial villages.

With this project I look at the way Americans such as myself interact with other cultures. I want to draw attention to the problematic depiction of “cultural others” in these trainings, and to challenge their implicit assumption of American cultural superiority.

The photographs in this series were made at the following military installations: Fort Drum, New York; Fort Irwin, California; Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Fort Polk, Louisiana; The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (Twentynine Palms), California; and The Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, California.