New York Times, Times Two
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)
September 1st, 2007 at 4:57 pm
i feel nothing but compassion for these people. however, if he really loved her he would let her go. i do not know the circumstances why, but i feel this to be made up just to upset people. as it has upset me. why show this?
September 1st, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I’m not sure if that’s a sincere question, or if you’re just attempting to be provocative, but in either case:
You SHOULD be upset. Many people are more than upset, they’re disabled for life, disfigured or dead, all ostensibly fighting for our ever-eroding freedoms. Thousands are dead, tens of thousands of soldiers are wounded, HUNDREDS of thousands of Iraqis are dead.
The images of this war and its wounded have been so tightly controlled that American people don’t have a clear picture of the costs and consequences. It’s a difficult show: the photos are hard to look at, the stories are painful to hear. I’m proud to offer a venue for them to be seen and heard in.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Barbara:
I tend to think it’s a much more complex image than you’re giving it credit for. In addition to it being an inherently anti-war image (by showing the human consequences), it also really speaks to the redemptive power of love. What a horrible, tragic, difficult thing for this young couple to go through; how incredible and wonderful that they are staying together. I’d like to think that my husband would still love me if something horrible happened to my face. The look on the young bride’s face tells me that wasn’t an easy, flip decision for her but rather a complex and difficult one. It is ultimately a deeply human photograph.
Life just keeps going on, whether we want to look around ourselves or not. I personally find this image to be incredibly brave. I don’t know if I’d have their courage (or the courage of the photographer to set up the image) if put in their position, but I hope so.
– Amy
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Dear Ms. Bekman,
Thank you for exhibiting these photos. They need to be seen. They are as stunning and meaningful as the hospital scenes in Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July.”
Reisa