In photos: a perilous portrait of America spiralling into fascism

Photographer Debi Cornwall’s ‘Model Citizens’ is an unnerving exposé of the banality of evil that hides in plain sight.

As a for­mer civ­il rights lawyer work­ing with inno­cent DNA exonerees, Debi Corn­wall spent 12 years seek­ing jus­tice from the very sys­tem that betrayed its own citizens. 

I mar­shalled evi­dence and con­nect­ed all the dots so that there’s only one log­i­cal con­clu­sion you could draw,” she says. But as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Corn­wall avoid­ed a didac­tic approach, pre­fer­ring to ques­tion and cri­tique empire, 21st cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can style.

The sto­ry begins in 2014 – 15, when Corn­wall trav­eled to Git­mo,” the U.S. Naval Sta­tion in Cuba to cre­ate Wel­come to Camp Amer­i­ca, Inside Guantánamo Bay, a sur­re­al por­trait inside the noto­ri­ous prison home to CIA-run tor­ture pro­grams under the George W. Bush régime. 

Recog­nis­ing the inter­play between mil­i­tari­sa­tion and myth, Corn­wall jour­neyed to the heart of empire for her sec­ond book, Nec­es­sary Fic­tions. She vis­it­ed 10 U.S. mil­i­tary train­ing grounds, pho­tograph­ing Amer­i­can sol­diers engaged in war games with Iraqi and Afghan actors hired to por­tray both civil­ians and resistance.

Now Corn­wall returns with Mod­el Cit­i­zens (Radius Books), com­plet­ing the tril­o­gy with an unnerv­ing exposé of the banal­i­ty of evil that hides in plain sight, fil­tered end­less­ly through media and enter­tain­ment. Weav­ing togeth­er frag­ment­ed scenes made from 2018 – 2023 at MAGA ral­lies, local muse­ums, and dur­ing US Bor­der Patrol Acad­e­my train­ing sce­nar­ios, Corn­wall cre­ates a per­ilous por­trait of a nation spi­ralling into fascism.

While mak­ing Mod­el Cit­i­zens, some­thing clicked. What I was see­ing was being staged: Amer­i­cans as hero­ic vic­tors or inno­cent vic­tims,” she says. The U.S. is always the good guy’ in our sto­ry, our his­to­ry, and our­selves in the world, but we’re not just pas­sive con­sumers of state pro­pa­gan­da. We are choos­ing our polit­i­cal and social com­mu­ni­ties, and those are kinds of performances.”

In a coun­try where bot farms, influ­encers, and trolls shape con­tem­po­rary dis­course, polit­i­cal the­atre rid­dles every cor­ner of Amer­i­can life. With Mod­el Cit­i­zens, Corn­wall crafts an unnerv­ing med­i­ta­tion of col­lec­tive delu­sion inside the impe­r­i­al core.

Point­ing to a pho­to­graph of muse­um fig­ure of a life size sol­dier with sweat bead­ing on his fur­rowed brow, Corn­wall cross­es into the uncan­ny val­ley, where every­thing is life­like” but noth­ing is real, most of all the fic­tions and fan­tasies of the US empire as good cop.”

Born of vio­lence at the heart of the Age of Enlight­en­ment that advances West­ern cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny through colo­nial­ism, geno­cide, and slav­ery, the Unit­ed States rose to glob­al promi­nence pro­ject­ing moral author­i­ty under the guise of human rights it reserved for the white landown­ing patriarchy.

Every­one else has had to scrape and claw their way to con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments and Supreme Court deci­sions that have proved ten­u­ous at best, only to have their rights used to jock­ey for votes in order to save democracy.”

It is here that post-truth malaise reigns supreme, its reach only grow­ing as AI explodes, cul­ti­vat­ing an Amer­i­can predilec­tion for solip­sism. Corn­wall reveals, For me, the anti­dote is to make pic­tures of real things hap­pen­ing in the world that invite peo­ple to think twice.”

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