After serving in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine, photographer Craig Barber returns twenty-eight years later to a country first seen in combat. Haunted by witnessed atrocities, Barber carries his memories of war back to Vietnam to quiet his ghosts. In the Vietnamese countryside, armed only with a handmade pinhole camera, he captures images of bomb craters turned into fish-rearing ponds, parts from airstrip runways used as window grates, and shell casings functioning as fence posts. In a country where half the population is under twenty and has no memory of war, Barber’s ethereal platinum prints give hope that healing and change is on the horizon.
Craig Barber, known for provocative landscape photographs and recognized among today’s premier platinum printers, has had over 60 solo exhibitions and has pieces in numerous collections including the George Eastman House in Rochester, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, and the Biblioteque Nationale de France in Paris. Barber lives in New York’s Hudson Valley and teaches photography workshops across the globe.
Alison Devine Nordstrom, curator for the George Eastman House, has curated over 100 exhibitions of photography and major surveys of contemporary installation, landscape, portraiture, and journalism. She has worked extensively with historical photographs relating to the construction of race and place, and is the author of numerous catalogue essays, chapters, articles, and reviews in academic publications. She lives in New York.
