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Defense Language

Defense Language

by Claire Beckett

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The photographs in Defense Language show costumed role-players, elaborate Hollywood-inspired sets and staged tableaus on military bases across the United States. Artist Claire Beckett embedded herself on these bases between 2006 and 2023 to explore the depiction of Arabs and Muslims during counterinsurgency training for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More about this book

‘With this project I look at the way Americans such as myself interact with other cultures. The photographs draw attention to the problematic depiction of ‘cultural others’ in these trainings, challenging the implicit assumption of American cultural superiority.’

Those portrayed in the photographs include military personnel—often combat veterans playing the role of enemy combatants—immigrants from Iraq or Afghanistan intended to make the training look and feel realistic, and local American civilians hired to populate the artificial villages. The photographs include a combination of formal portraits, landscapes depicting
makeshift constructed buildings, and more informal images of the figures interacting within the training scenarios. The photographs were made at Fort
Drum, New York; Fort Irwin, California; Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Fort Polk, Louisiana; The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (Twentynine Palms),
California; and The Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, California.

Printed materials such as fold-out pocket guides used by American soldiers and Marines deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and language training workbooks for Americans with ties to the military are combined with the photographs. These materials were created either by the US military, related branches of the government or military contractors. Beckett purchased a majority of this literature from ebay by searching for keywords related to American military involvement in the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although many of the materials are contemporary to the time of the project, some are historic and date back to the 1960s and 1970s, revealing the longstanding nature of American biases relating to Arab and Muslim people.

 ‘As a young adult post 9/11, I worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bénin, West Africa. Through this experience, I learned to see myself as an American, and to take ownership of my power in a global context. This experience forced me to confront the disproportionately large influence that we have as Americans, and how our actions, or inactions, impact the lives of people worldwide.’

Published November 2025
280 x 227 mm
192pp, 136 images
Hardback
ISBN 978-1-915423-98-6

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From the author

  • Claire Beckett was born in 1978 in Chicago, IL and lives and works in Boston, MA. She graduated from Kenyon College, Gambier, OH with a B.A in Anthropology before working as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Upon her return to the US she earned an M.F.A. in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum and Carroll and Sons Art Gallery, and included in group shows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass MoCA, the National Portrait Gallery, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Aperture Foundation, and FOTODOK (NL), amongst others. She has been awarded an Artadia Award and was artist-in-residence at Light Work. Her work has been featured in 'Artforum', 'American Art', 'Public Culture' and 'The Boston Globe'. Her work is held in collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA, Light Work, Syracuse, NY, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.

  • 'With this project I look at the way Americans such as myself interact with other cultures. The photographs draw attention to the problematic depiction of ‘cultural others’ in these trainings, challenging the implicit assumption of American cultural superiority.’

    - Claire Beckett