Defense Language

From 2006-2023 Claire Beckett embedded on military bases within the United States, photographing the depiction of Arab and Muslim people 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.

In Defense Language, Beckett examines the way Americans interact with other cultures while the images draw attention to the often problematic depiction of ‘cultural others’ in these trainings, challenging the implicit assumption of American cultural superiority.

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