Portraits of Iraqis by Daniel Heyman
April 24, 2011 9:22 AM Subscribe
I am an artist who by a stroke of good fortune met a brave American lawyer who represents several hundred Iraqi detainees in the US federal courts....the Iraqis I interviewed, released by the American military after many months or years of detention, were never formally accused of a crime, brought to a trial or given legal representation. Daniel Heyman paints and draws while sitting in on interviews between former Abu Ghraib detainees and their lawyer Susan Burke. Interview (including Heyman's thoughts about Errol Morris' documentary Standard Operating Procedure). Review. Another gallery. Related: The Detainee Project. Via zunguzungu.
(links to Heyman's site are to sets with multiple images, in case that's not obvious)
(links to Heyman's site are to sets with multiple images, in case that's not obvious)
I like these pictures. Art as just another simple tool (along with due process) that shrinks these TERRORIST AL-QA'IDA IRAQI MONSTERS back down to human size. Mostly people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and thrown into the mouth of a big, horrible machine.
As a society, our fat and shapeless attitude towards the whole 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib mechanism has really undermined my confidence that art ever really had any power to "humanize" the public's consciousness in a timely way.
posted by bonobothegreat at 12:20 PM on April 24, 2011
As a society, our fat and shapeless attitude towards the whole 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib mechanism has really undermined my confidence that art ever really had any power to "humanize" the public's consciousness in a timely way.
posted by bonobothegreat at 12:20 PM on April 24, 2011
Painful and powerful. Horribile dictu.
Thank you for this post, mediareport.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:20 PM on April 24, 2011
Thank you for this post, mediareport.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:20 PM on April 24, 2011
Yet what was the stat on NPR this AM about gitmo and wikileaks ? 700-something folks detained, ~170 were "totally innocent" .. As a cold hard number, batting .750 ain't too bad ..
posted by k5.user at 7:38 AM on April 25, 2011
posted by k5.user at 7:38 AM on April 25, 2011
That's not even worth responding to.
posted by mediareport at 12:40 PM on April 25, 2011
posted by mediareport at 12:40 PM on April 25, 2011
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