Nina Berman is featured once more in today’s (Friday, Aug 31st) New York Times, this time in the Art Listings:

NINA BERMAN: ‘PURPLE HEARTS’ One of the more shocking photographs to come out of the current war in Iraq was taken last year in a rural town in the American Midwest. It’s a studio portrait by Nina Berman of a young Illinois couple on their wedding day. The bride is dressed in a traditional white gown; the groom, a former Marine sergeant, is in full dress. Her expression is unsmiling, maybe grave. His face is all but featureless, with no nose and no chin, as blank as a pullover mask, the results of disfiguring wounds sustained in combat. The show also includes 10 portraits of wounded veterans from Ms. Berman’s series “Purple Hearts.” Whatever your politics, the show, installed in a small storefront gallery, adds up to a desolating antiwar statement. Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street, between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street, Lower East Side; (212) 219-0166, jenbekman.com, through Sept. 8. (Cotter)

Images from the Dark Side of War by Marc Pitzke for Der Spiegel
A moving photo exhibition in New York shows what the media doesn’t—shocking photos of seriously wounded Iraq veterans. The images and the soldiers’ quotes which accompany them say more about the war than you might want to know.

“Purple Hearts”, miroir brisé de la guerre by Thomas Giovanetti for Liberation
La guerre n’est pas que gloire. Enrôlés la fleur au fusil comme on entame une partie de Playstation, ces jeunes gens mis “Game Over” sont aujourd’hui des oubliés. La photographe les a donc saisis dans leur anonymat, au cœur de l’Amérique profonde, bien loin du mythe guerrier et de l’héroïsme des G.I’s.

Closer to home:
Bringing Home the Faces of War by Mary-Ellen Schoonmaker for The Record
[Berman’s] exhibit at the Jen Bekman Gallery in lower Manhattan couldn’t be more timely, given the debate that is raging in Congress over whether to bring the troops home from Iraq and when. The war is continuing in Iraq, and the suffering of so many soldiers who have left Iraq is continuing as well. For many of them, it will go on for the rest of their lives.

Here’s a round-up of additional press for Nina Berman’s Purple Hearts, which has been extended through Saturday September 8th:

First off, the show is once more recommended in the NY Daily News, this time in the Sports section, where columnist Bill Gallo writes:

It’s so very true that a picture can tell a thousand words and more. If you look at Nina Berman’s photographs of Iraq veterans coming home with their Purple Hearts, you’ll hear a cascade of words roaring, “No more War!” “No more War, Ever!” You will never view a stronger anti-war statement.

Go see “Nina Berman: Purple Hearts”

There’s also been a good deal of online coverage, here’s a sampling:

Time Magazine Arts Blog, written by Richard Lacayo:
...these are some of the most affecting pictures I’ve seen of the costs inscribed on the human body by the war in Iraq. No matter what you think of that war, it would be fair to say that over the past few years Berman has paid more compassionate attention to American veterans than their own government has.

Daily Kos:
Looking at today’s NY Times, my heart was broken open. There is a new and devastating exhibition of photographs called ``Purple Hearts’’ opening in NYC by the photographer Nina Berman. To see these photos is to deepen the disgust with today’s talk from our elders…We must have the Senate and House see these pictures and show them to the world.

Flavorpill
Images of the Iraq war were surprisingly scarce this summer in New York’s galleries. Whatever the reason, Jen Bekman — who goes where many gallerists won’t — remedies this in a show of Nina Berman’s series Purple Hearts.

Ion Arts Blog
Showing now at Bekman is Purple Hearts, photographer Nina Berman’s images and interviews with soldiers severely wounded in Iraq, including her award-winning Marine Wedding, shown here. The images are amazing, sensitive, and apolitical: they are a direct testament to the consequences of war.

And if anyone happens to speak Korean, perhaps they can give us a decent translation of this item, which sent a lot of traffic to our web site and brought many visitors to the gallery as well.

Currently the lead story over at The New York Times online:
Words Unspoken on War’s Faces by Holland Cotter:

Ms. Berman adds no direct editorial comment to the presentation. She has said in interviews that she started photographing disabled veterans soon after the war began mainly because she didn’t see anyone else doing so. In what may be the most intensively photographed war in history, the visual documentation has been selective. The fate of the injured veterans was not a public issue until news reports about substandard treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

This background provides the context for Ms. Berman’s photographs, which are themselves tip-of-the-iceberg images. No matter what the viewer’s political position, the images add up to a complex and desolating anti-war statement…

Spc. Luis Calderon by Nina Berman

Joanna Molloy, the Molloy in New York Daily News gossip column duoRush & Molloy, attending Nina’s opening on August 8th. She chatted with Nina for a while about the exhibition, and a small knot of eavesdroppers gathered around them loosely while they talked – Joanna was so engaged and asked such good questions, and Nina is just incredibly articulate about the work. (You can find out yourself at the artist talk next week.) Joanna’s interest in the show led to the somewhat unlikely bold-faced appearance of Nina and the subject of one of her portraits, Luis Calderon (pictured above) in yesterday’s Rush & Molloy column:

Luis Calderon was paralyzed in Iraq — but can’t get a Purple Heart. The 22-year-old was injured when a mural of Saddam Hussein he was ordered to pull down with his tank crashed onto him, and you must be injured in combat with an enemy to receive the medal. Photos of him and other disabled Iraqi vets are now up at the Jen Bekman Gallery, where photographer Nina Berman, who includes the pics in her book, “Purple Hearts,” will speak Aug 29.

James Wagner and Barry Hoggard stopped in to see the exhibition on Saturday. You can read about James’s response to the exhibition over on his blog.

“From my neckline down, I can not feel anything…. I got an Army Commendation Medal. I didn’t get a Purple Heart. I feel like I deserve one. It would make me more confident that I really did something.”

Join us at the gallery on Wednesday August 29th, from 6pm-8pm, at a reception and artist talk with Nina Berman. Nina will also be signing copies of her monograph Purple Hearts, which can be purchased for $25.

Space is extremely limited so an RSVP is required: send an email to rsvp AT jenbekman DOT com if you’d like to attend and/or reserve a copy of the book.

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
(between Elizabeth + Bowery)
New York, NY 10012

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday: Noon to 6pm

Spc. Robert Acosta, 20 years old, 1st Armored Division, was wounded July 13, 2003 in Baghdad when an Iraqi teenager threw a grenade into his humvee.
In the explosion, Acosta lost his right hand and the use of his left leg.
The Iraqi was killed.
“In California, nobody really knows what the soldiers are going through. They see on TV, oh yeah, two soldiers got wounded today and they think yeah he’ll be all right. But that soldier is scarred for life both physically and mentally.”
Before I would go to a lot of parties. I haven’t been to a club. I just don’t like dealing with the questions. Especially people around here. They don’t know what’s going on.
They ask stupid questions like, ‘Was it hot? Did you shoot anybody?’ They want me to glorify war and say it was so cool. The reality of it is, seeing all that crap, fucks you up in the head man. I can’t sleep at night. It sucks. It really sucks.”

More Information about the Exhibition:

Images | Press Release | Artist Information

Gallery Location, Hours + Etc.

by Alison Grippo

We just recieved news that jb photographer Alison Grippo and her team (make-up artist Susie Sobel and stylist H. Tate Reynolds) won the previously mentioned PHTHRD competition.

We knew she’d win, but still… big congrats to Alison!

Read about it here.

In other news, the deadline for the Summer Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! has just been extended. Work will now be accepted until Tuesday, August 14, 2007 at 11am ET.

As you may know, Alison was a 2006 Ultra and Nina Berman, having a solo show at the gallery opening tomorrow, a Spring ‘07 Hot Shot. What this means? Being a Hot Shot definitely pays off…

Submit your entry today!

Wasim Khan by Nina Berman

The opening reception for Nina Berman’s Purple Hearts will be held tomorrow from 6pm – 8pm at the gallery. There will be copies of Purple Hearts, the book, available at the opening.

Images from the exhibition along with the artist’s statement and the press release have been posted online.

Purple Hearts will be on view August 8 through August 30, 2007.

A New American Portrait installation view
courtesy of Joe Holmes

Those of you hoping to catch the final stretch of A New American Portrait will be happy to hear that the show will stay up one extra day!

Tomorrow, the gallery will be open from noon to 6 – your last chance to see, all together, the wonderful photographs of Christine Collins, Jen Davis, Benjamin Donaldson, Amy Elkins, Peter Haakon Thompson, Todd Hido, Alec Soth, Brian Ulrich, and Shen Wei.

Spc. Tyson Johnson, 22, wounded in a mortar attack on Abu Ghraib prison
by Nina Berman

Catch the last day of ANAP and then stop by again on Wednesday, August 8 at 6pm, as the gallery will reopen with a reception for Purple Hearts, photographs by Nina Berman.

Mark your calendars, the New York Times says so!

Photo of the JB by Joe Holmes

The New York Times ran a feature on Sunday called Summer’s Seven Day Week, covering the myriad galleries which actually have August hours. Here’s the snippet about the gallery:

A brief zig and zag down the Bowery onto Spring lands you at Jen Bekman Gallery, which is scheduled to take down its cool group exhibition “A New American Portrait” on Thursday [Ed. note: It’s actually open through Friday], and reopen on Aug. 8 with “Purple Hearts.” This solo show, by the photographer Nina Berman, looks at wounded soldiers back from Iraq. Ms. Berman won a World Press Photo Award for her wedding portrait of Ty Ziegel, a disfigured Marine sergeant, and his wife, Renée.