The pretend villages : inside the U.S. Military Training Grounds / Christopher Sims ; published in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University ; with an essay by Wells Tower.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Sims, Christopher (Photographer), photographer, writer of supplementary textual content.

Tower, Wells, 1973- writer of supplementary textual content.

Duke University. Center for Documentary Studies, issuing body.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sims, Christopher.

Photography, Artistic.

Military training camps--United States--Pictorial works.

Military training camps.

United States.

Genre:

Pictorial works.

Illustrated works.

Physical Description:

1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm + 1 card (10 x 7 cm)

Place of Publication:

Heidelberg : Kehrer, [2021]

Summary:

The Pretend Villages documents the inhabitants and structures of imagined, fabricated Iraqi and Afghan villages on the training grounds of US military bases. Situated in the deep forests of North Carolina and Louisiana and in a great expanse of desert near Death Valley in California, these villages serve as strange and poignant way stations for soldiers headed off to war, and for those who have fled from it: American troops encounter actors, often recent immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan, who are paid to be ?cultural role-players.± Christopher Sims photographed in these sur-prising and fantastical realms over a fifteen-year period as US wars abroad fluctuated in intensity. With this book, he presents an archival record of ?enemy± village life that is as convincingly accurate and comically misdirected as it is mundane and nightmarish.

Notes:

Chiefly illustrated.

ISBN:

9783969000014

3969000017

OCLC:

1241661929

Publisher Number:

9783969000014