Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out
Photographs by Edmund Clark

The exhibit has come to a close and is now available to tour. A preview of all images are available at ifthelightgoesout.com and exhibit rental information is available as a PDF download.

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"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 in a room, I am back in my cell."

  —Binyam Mohamed, Prisoner #1458

About the Exhibition
This is a study of home--of a very particular idea of home at a very particular time in our history.

Rather than an attempt to monumentalize the Guantanamo camps, these images illustrate three ideas 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 narrative of these images aims to evoke the process of disorientation and dislocation central to the techniques of incarceration at Guantanamo, and to explore the legacy of disturbance such experiences have in the minds and memories of these men. The viewer is asked to jump from prison camp detail to domestic still life, from life outside to the naval base and back again. From light to dark.

Interspersed within these images are Letters To Omar, a selection of cards and letters sent to UK resident Omar Deghayes during his five years of captivity at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps. Some are from his family and his lawyer, but the majority are from people around the world who had never met Omar. These are the choices they made in terms of images and words to send to a man in a cell thousands of miles away. At Guantanamo, everything Omar was sent was transformed and degraded by a process of scanning, redaction, archiving and stamping. Original cards and letters became abstracted copies made complicit in the process of control, and reflections of the subjugation and degradation of the recipient. Omar never saw the original documents.

Video of Edmund Clark's artist talk at the Gage Gallery opening reception on February 7, 2013.

Press about the Exhibition
Medill—February 8—Terror and abuse: Guantanamo in pictures unravels in Chicago
Slate—April 23—Life at Guantanamo, and What Happens Next

About the Photographer
Edmund Clark is best known for his award-winning work on the representation of control and incarceration through the monographs Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2010) and Still Life Killing Time (2007). His new work Control Order House (2012) continues his exploration of these themes in relation to the ‘War on Terror.’

After studying for a degree in History at the University of Sussex and the University of Paris, La Sorbonne, he worked in international research in London and Brussels before gaining a postgraduate photojournalism diploma at the London College of Communications.

Clark was awarded the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal for outstanding photography for public service in 2011. He was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet for 2012 for the theme of Power.

His work has been published and exhibited widely and is held in national and international museum collections including the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum and the National Media Museum in the UK and the George Eastman House and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA.

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Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out is a touring exhibition organized by Professor Michael Ensdorf, and Roosevelt University. Download exhibit rental information. Exhibition courtesy of Edmund Clark.