Nina Berman’s “Purple Hearts” Comes to jen bekman in August
Pfc. Randall Clunen, 19, wounded in Tal Afar by a suicide car bomber
© Nina Berman
You may recall her award-winning portrait of disfigured Iraq vet Ty Ziegel and his fiancée, Renee, on their wedding day in the Spring Edition of Hey, Hot Shot!. On view from August 8 – 30, 2007, Nina Berman will be showing more from her body of work entitled Purple Hearts—portraits taken in soldiers’ homes, in military hospitals, and on Army bases across the U.S.—at jen bekman.
Jen was very excited to show her photograph in HHS! but felt the work deserved more—that an audience would benefit from looking at additional stories from Purple Hearts. “This is an important project, and I’m thrilled to be able to offer a venue for it to be seen in,” she said, “It tackles what I consider to be one of the most disturbing, and over-looked, aspects of this war: the stories of those soldiers who have been maimed and the lives they continue to lead once they’ve come back home.”
To coincide with the exhibition, there will be a signing held at the gallery for Purple Hearts, the book (dates for this signing TBA —check back here or on the gallery site for updates). The book, along with the photographs, features interviews with the American soldiers who were wounded in Iraq.
Luke Strosnider, writer for Afterimage, wrote on his blog about his initial reaction to seeing Nina’s image at the gallery in the Spring: “At first I felt the inclusion of this image in the popular quarterly contest seemed totally wrong,” he writes, but “after some sustained thought and attempts to untangle all the threads, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the walls of jen bekman – or any art gallery – are an ideal place for this image.”
Nina says in an interview with Salon that what makes the photographs compelling is that “they provide the space for the viewers to contemplate.”
More about the Purple Hearts project can be found here.
Nina Berman
Purple Hearts
jen bekman
August 8 – 30, 2007
