In photos: a perilous portrait of America spiralling into fascism
- Text by Miss Rosen
- Photography by Debi Cornwall

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 regime.

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.”
Latest on Huck

Plestia Alaqad: “Journalists should focus on humanising people”
Huck’s April interview — Having become one of the most crucial and followed voices from inside Gaza in the aftermath of October 7, the award-winning author and journalist is releasing a new memoir, ‘The Eyes of Gaza’, collating diary entries made over the past 18 months. We caught up with her to hear more about it.
Written by: Isaac Muk

The instrument makers taking DIY music to a whole new level
What does it take to construct a modular synth? How do you turn a block of wood into a double bass? Here, four craftspeople explain why they chose to rip up the rulebooks and build their own music-making machines.
Written by: Daniel Dylan Wray

Southbank Centre reveals new series dedicated to East and Southeast Asian arts
ESEA Encounters — Taking place between 17-20 July, there will be a live concert from YMO’s Haruomi Hosono, as well as discussions around Asian literature, stage productions, and a pop-up Japanese Yokimono summer market.
Written by: Zahra Onsori

In 1971, Pink Narcissus redefined queer eroticism
Camp classic — A new restoration of James Bidgood’s cult film is showing in US theatres this spring. We revisit its boundary pushing aesthetics, as well as its enduring legacy.
Written by: Miss Rosen

As amapiano goes global, where does it leave its roots?
Rainbow grooves — Over the past decade, the house music subgenre has exploded into a worldwide phenomenon. Jak Hutchcraft went to its birthplace of Mamelodi, South Africa, to explore its still-thriving local scene.
Written by: Jak Hutchcraft

Clubbing is good for your health, according to neuroscientists
We Become One — A new documentary explores the positive effects that dance music and shared musical experiences can have on the human brain.
Written by: Zahra Onsori